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SOLARIS

Books by Stanislaui Lem

The Chain of Chance
The Cyberiad
Eden
Fiasco

The Futurological Congress
Highcastle: A Remembrance
His Master’s Voice
Hospital of Transfiguration
Imaginary Magnitude
The Investigation
The Invincible

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Memoirs of a Space Traveler
Microworlds

More Tales of Pirx the Pilot
Mortal Engines
One Human Minute
A Perfect Vacuum
Return from the Stars
Solaris

The Star Diaries
Tales of Pirx the Pilot

STANISLAW LEM

SOLARIS

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY JOANNA KILMARTIN AND STEVE COX

A HARVEST BOOK • HARCOURT, INC.
San Diego New York London

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Reguests for permission to make copies of any part of the work
should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,
Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Walker, 1970.

"A Harvest book."

I. Title

PG7158.L39S613 1987 891.8'537 86-31938
ISBN 0-15-602760-7

Printed in the United States of America
First Harvest edition 1987

C E G I J H F D B

CONTENTS

The Arrival

The Solarists

The Visitors

Sartorius

Rheya

“The Little Apocrypha”

The Conference

The Monsters

106

The Liquid Oxygen

132

Conversation

147

The Thinkers

158

The Dreams

176

Victory

186

The Old Mimoid

195

The Arrival

At 19.00 hours, ship’s time, I made my way to the launch-
ing bay. The men around the shaft stood aside to let me
pass, and I climbed down into the capsule.

Inside the narrow cockpit, there was scarcely room to
move. I attached the hose to the valve on my space suit
and it inflated rapidly. From then on, I was incapable of
making the smallest movement. There I stood, or rather
hung suspended, enveloped in my pneumatic suit and
yoke to the metal hull.

I looked up; through the transparent canopy I could see
a smooth, polished wall and, far above, Moddard’s head
leaning over the top of the shaft. He vanished, and sud-
denly I was plunged in darkness: the heavy protective
cone had been lowered into place. Eight times I heard the
hum of the electric motors which turned the screws, fol-
lowed by the hiss of the shock-absorbers. As my eyes grew
accustomed to the dark, I could see the luminous circle of
the solitary dial.

A voice echoed in my headphones:

“Ready Kelvin?”

“Ready, Moddard,” I answered.

“Don’t worry about a thing. The Station will pick you
up in flight. Have a good trip!”

There was a grinding noise and the capsule swayed. My

muscles tensed in spite of myself, but there was no further
noise or movement.

“When is lift-off?” As I asked, I noticed a rustling out-
side, like a shower of fine sand.

“You’re on your way, Kelvin. Good luck!” Moddard’s
voice sounded as close as before.

A wide slit opened at eye-level, and I could see the stars.
The Prometheus was orbiting in the region of Alpha in
Aquarius and I tried in vain to orient myself; a glittering
dust filled my porthole. I could not recognize a single
constellation; in this region of the galaxy the sky was un-
familiar to me. I waited for the moment when I would pass
near the first distinct star, but I was unable to isolate any
one of them. Their brightness was fading; they receded,
merging into a vague, purplish glimmer, the sole indica-
tion of the distance I had already travelled. My body rigid,
sealed in its pneumatic envelope, I was knifing through
space with the impression of standing still in the void, my
only distraction the steadily mounting heat.

Suddenly, there was a shrill, grating sound, like a steel
blade being drawn across a sheet of wet glass. This was
it, the descent. If I had not seen the figures racing across
the dial, I would not have noticed the change in direction.
The stars having vanished long since, my gaze was swal-
lowed up on the pale reddish glow of infinity. I could hear
my heart thudding heavily. I could feel the coolness from
the air-conditioning on my neck, although my face
seemed to be on fire. I regretted not having caught a
glimpse of the Prometheus, but the ship must have been out
of sight by the time the automatic controls had raised the
shutter of my porthole.

The capsule was shaken by a sudden jolt, then another.
The whole vehicle began to vibrate. Filtered through the
insulating layers of the outer skins, penetrating my pneu-
matic cocoon, the vibration reached me, and ran through
my entire body. The image of the dial shivered and multi-
plied, and its phosphorescence spread out in all direc-
tions. I felt no fear. I had not undertaken this long voyage
only to overshoot my target!

I called into the microphone:

“Station Solaris! Station Solaris! Station Solaris! I
think I am leaving the flight-path, correct my course! Sta-
tion Solaris, this is the Prometheus capsule. Over.”

I had missed the precious moment when the planet first
came into view. Now it was spread out before my eyes; flat,
and already immense. Nevertheless, from the appearance
of its surface, I judged that I was still at a great height
above it, since I had passed that imperceptible frontier
after which we measure the distance that separates us
from a celestial body in terms of altitude. I was falling.
Now I had the sensation of falling, even with my eyes
closed. (I quickly reopened them: I did not want to miss
anything there was to be seen.)

I waited a moment in silence before trying once more
to make contact. No response. Successive bursts of static
came through the headphones, against a background of
deep, low-pitched murmuring, which seemed to me the
very voice of the planet itself. A veil of mist covered the
orange-colored sky, obscuring the porthole. Instinctively,
I hunched myself up as much as my inflated suit would
allow, but almost at once I realized that I was passing
through cloud. Then, as though sucked upwards, the
cloud-mass lifted; I was gliding, half in light, half in
shadow, the capsule revolving upon its own vertical axis.
At last, through the porthole, the gigantic ball of the sun
appeared, looming up on the left and disappearing to the
right.

A distant voice reached me through the murmuring
and crackling.

“Station Solaris calling! Station Solaris calling! The
capsule will land at zero-hour. I repeat, the capsule will
land at zero-hour. Stand by for count-down. Two hundred
and fifty, two hundred and forty-nine, two hundred and
forty-eight. . . ”

The words were punctuated by sharp screeching
sounds; automatic equipment was intoning the phrases of
the reception-drill. This was surprising, to say the least.
As a rule, men on space stations were eager to greet a
newcomer, especially if he was arriving direct from Earth.
I did not have long to ponder this, for the sun’s orbit.

which had so far encircled me, shifted unexpectedly, and
the incandescent disc appeared now to the right, now to
the left, seeming to dance on the planet’s horizon. I was
swinging like a giant pendulum while the planet, its sur-
face wrinkled with purplish-blue and black furrows, rose
up in front of me like a wall. As my head began to spin,
I caught sight of a tiny pattern of green and white dots;
it was the station’s positioning-marker. Something de-
tached itself with a snap from the cone of the capsule; with
a fierce jerk, the long parachute collar released its hoops,
and the noise which followed reminded me irresistibly of
Earth: for the first time after so many months, the moan-
ing of the wind.

Everything went quickly after this. So far, I had known
that I must be falling; now I could see it for myself. The
green and white checker-board grew rapidly larger and I
could see that it was painted on an elongated silvery body,
shaped like a whale, its flanks bristling with radar anten-
nae. This metal colossus, which was pierced with several
rows of shadowy apertures, was not resting on the planet
itself but suspended above it, casting upon the inky sur-
face beneath an ellipsoidal shadow of even deeper black-
ness. I could make out the slate-colored ripples of the
ocean, stirring with a faint motion. Suddenly, the clouds
rose to a great height, rimmed with a blinding crimson
glare; the lurid sky became grey, distant and flat; every-
thing was blotted out; I was falling in a spin.

A sharp jolt, and the capsule righted itself. Through the
porthole, I could see the ocean once more, the waves like
crests of glittering quicksilver. The hoops of the para-
chute, their cords snapped, flapped furiously over the
waves, carried on the wind. The capsule gently de-
scended, swaying with a peculiar slow-motion rhythm im-
posed on it by the artificial magnetic field; there was just
time to glimpse the launchingpads and the parabolic re-
flectors of two radio-telescopes on top of their pierced-
steel towers.

With the clang of steel rebounding against steel, the
capsule came to a stop. A hatch opened, and with a long,
harsh sigh, the metal shell which imprisoned me reached
the end of its voyage.

I heard the mechanical voice from the control center:

“Station Solaris. Zero and zero. The capsule has
landed. Out.”

Feeling a vague pressure on my chest and a disagreea-
ble heaviness in the pit of my stomach, I seized the control
levers with both hands and cut the contacts. A green in-
dicator lit up: ‘ARRIVAL.’ The capsule opened, and the
pneumatic padding shoved me gently from behind, so
that, in order to keep my balance, I had to take a step
forward.

With a muffled sigh of resignation, the space-suit ex-
pelled its air. I was free.

I found myself inside a vast, silver funnel, as high as a
cathedral nave. A cluster of colored pipes ran down the
sloping walls and disappeared into rounded orifices. I
turned round. The ventilation shafts were roaring, suck-
ing in the poisonous gases from the planet’s atmosphere
which had infiltrated when my capsule had landed inside
the Station. Empty, resembling a burst cocoon, the cigar-
shaped capsule stood upright, enfolded by a calyx
mounted on a steel base. The outer casing, scorched dur-
ing flight, had turned a dirty brown.

I went down a small stairway. The metal floor below had
been coated with a heavy-duty plastic. In places, the
wheels of trolleys carrying rockets had worn through this
plastic covering to expose the bare steel beneath.

The throbbing of the ventilators ceased abruptly and
there was total silence. I looked around me, a little uncer-
tain, waiting for someone to appear; but there was no sign
of life. Only a neon arrow glowed, pointing towards a
moving walkway which was silently unreeling. I allowed
myself to be carried forward.

The ceiling of the hall descended in a fine parabolic arc
until it reached the entrance to a gallery, in whose re-
cesses gas cylinders, gauges, parachutes, crates and a
quantity of other objects were scattered about in untidy
heaps.

The moving walkway set me down at the far end of the
gallery, on the threshold of a dome. Here there was an
even greater disorder. A pool of oily liquid spread out
from beneath a pile of oil-drums; a nauseating smell hung

in the air; footprints, in a series of glutinous smears, went
off in all directions. The oil-drums were covered with a
tangle of tickertape, torn paper and other waste.

Another green arrow directed me to the central door.
Behind this stretched a narrow corridor, hardly wide
enough for two men to walk side by side, lit by slabs of
glass let into the ceiling. Then another door, painted in
green and white squares, which was ajar; I went in.

The cabin had concave walls and a big panoramic win-
dow, which a glowing mist had tinged with purple. Out-
side the murky waves slid silently past. Open cupboards
lined the walls, filled with instruments, books, dirty
glasses, vacuum flasks — all covered with dust. Five or six
small trolleys and some collapsible chairs cluttered up the
stained floor. One chair alone was inflated, its back raised.
In this armchair there was a little thin man, his face burnt
by the sun, the skin on his nose and cheeks coming away
in large flakes. I recognized him as Snow, a cybernetics
expert and Gibarian’s deputy. In his time he had pub-
lished articles of great originality in the Solarist Annual.
It so happened that I had never had the opportunity of
meeting him. He was wearing a mesh shirt which allowed
the grey hairs of his sunken chest to poke through here
and there, and canvas trousers with a great many pockets,
mechanic’s trousers, which had once been white but now
were stained at the knees and covered with holes from
chemical burns. He was holding one of those pear-shaped
plastic flasks which are used in spaceships not equipped
with internal gravitational systems. Snow’s eyes widened
in amazement as he looked up and saw me. The flask
dropped from his fingers and bounced several times,
spilling a few drops of transparent liquid. Blood drained
from his face. I was too astonished to speak, and this
dumbshow continued for so long that Snow’s terror grad-
ually communicated itself to me. I took a step forward. He
cringed in his chair.

“Snow?”

He quivered as though I had struck him. Gazing at me
in indescribable horror, he gasped out:

“I don’t know you . . .” His voice croaked. “I don’t know
you . . . What do you want?”

The spilt liquid was quickly evaporating; I caught a
whiff of alcohol. Had he been drinking? Was he drunk?
What was he so terrified of? I stood in the middle of the
room; my legs were trembling; my ears roared, as though
they were stuffed with cotton wool. I had the impression
that the ground was giving way beneath my feet. Beyond
the curved window, the ocean rose and fell with regularity.
Snow’s blood-shot eyes never left me. His terror seemed
to have abated, but his expression of invincible disgust
remained.

“What’s the matter? Are you ill?” I whispered.

“You seem worried,” he said, his voice hollow. “You
actually seem worried ... So it’s like that now, is it? But
why concern yourself about me? I don’t know you.”

“Where’s Gibarian?” I asked.

He gave a gasp and his glassy eyes lit up for an instant.

“Gi . . .Giba . . .No! No!”

His whole frame shook with stifled, hysterical laughter;
then he seemed to calm down a little.

“So it’s Gibarian you’ve come for, is it? Poor old
Gibarian. What do you want with him?”

His words, or rather his tone of voice, expressed hatred
and defiance; it was as though I had suddenly ceased to
represent a threat to him.

Bewildered, I mumbled:

“What. . . Where is he?”

“Don’t you know?”

Obviously he was drunk and raving. My anger rose. I
should have controlled myself and left the room, but I had
lost patience. I shouted:

“That’s enough! How could I know where he is since
I’ve only just arrived? Snow! What’s going on here?”

His jaw dropped. Once again he caught his breath and
his eyes gleamed with a different light. He seized the arms
of his chair with both hands and stood up with difficulty.
His knees were trembling.

“What? You’ve just arrived. . . Where have you come
from?” he asked, almost sober.

“From Earth!” I retorted angrily. “Maybe you’ve heard
of it? Not that anyone would ever guess it.”

“From Earth? Good God! Then you must be Kelvin.”

“Of course. Why are you looking at me like that? What’s
so startling about me?”

He blinked rapidly.

“Nothing,” he said, wiping his forehead, “nothing.
Forgive me, Kelvin, it’s nothing, I assure you. I was simply
surprised, I didn’t expect to see you.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t expect to see me? You
were notified months ago, and Moddard radioed only to-
day from the Prometheus. ”

“Yes; yes, indeed. Only, you see, we’re a bit disorgan-
ized at the moment.”

“So I see,” I answered dryly.

Snow walked around me, inspecting my atmosphere
suit, which was standard issue with the usual harness of
wires and cables attached to the chest. He coughed, and
rubbed his bony nose:

“Perhaps you would like a bath? It would do you good.
It’s the blue door, on the other side.”

“Thanks — I know the Station lay-out.”

“You must be hungry.”

“No. Where’s Gibarian?”

Without answering, he went over to the window. From
behind he looked considerably older. His close-cropped
hair was grey, and deep wrinkles creased his sunburnt
neck.

The wave-crests glinted through the window, the colos-
sal rollers rising and falling in slow-motion. Watching the
ocean like this one had the illusion — it was surely an illu-
sion — that the Station was moving imperceptibly, as
though teetering on an invisible base; then it would seem
to recover its equilibrium, only to lean the opposite way
with the same lazy movement. Thick foam, the color of
blood, gathered in the troughs of the waves. For a fraction
of a second, my throat tightened and I thought longingly
of the Prometheus and its strict discipline; the memory of
an existence which suddenly seemed a happy one, now
gone for ever.

Snow turned round, nervously rubbing his hands to-
gether.

“Listen,” he said abruptly, “except for me there’s no

one around for the moment. You’ll have to make do with
my company for today. Call me Ratface; don’t argue. You
know me by my photograph, just imagine we’re old
friends. Everyone calls me Ratface, there’s nothing I can
do about it.”

Obstinately, I repeated my question:

“Where is Gibarian?”

He blinked again.

“I’m sorry to have received you like that. It’s. . . it’s not
exactly my fault. I had completely forgotten. . . A lot has
been happening here, you see. . . ”

“It’s all right. But what about Gibarian? Isn’t he on the
Station? Is he on an observation flight?”

Snow was gazing at a tangled mass of cables.

“No, he hasn’t left the Station. And he won’t be flying.
The fact is. . . ”

My ears were still blocked, and I was finding it more and
more difficult to hear.

“What? What do you mean? Where is he then?”

‘ I should think you might guess,” he answered in a
changed voice, looking me coldly in the eyes. I shivered.
He was drunk, but he knew what he was saying.

“There’s been an accident?”

He nodded vigorously, watching my reactions closely.

“When?” 7

“This morning, at dawn.”

By now, my sensations were less violent; this succinct
exchange of questions and answers had calmed me. I was
beginning to understand Snow’s strange behavior.

“What kind of accident?”

“Why not go to your cabin and take off your spacesuit?
Come back in, say, an hour’s time.”

I hesitated.

“All right,” I said finally.

As I made to leave, he called me back.

“Wait!” He had an uneasy look, as if he wanted to add
something but was finding it difficult to bring out the
words. After a pause, he said:

“There used to be three of us here. Now, with you,
there are three of us again. Do you know Sartorius?”

“In the same way as I knew you — only from his photo-
graphs.”

“He’s up there, in the laboratory, and I doubt if he’ll
come down before dark, but. . . In any case, you’ll recog-
nize him. If you should see anyone else — someone who
isn’t me or Sartorius, you understand, then. . . ”

“Then what?”

I must be dreaming. All this could only be a dream! The
inky waves, their crimson gleams under the low-hanging
sun, and this little man who had gone back to his arm-
chair, sitting there as before, hanging his head and star-
ing at the heap of cables.

“In that case, do nothing.”

“Who could I see?” I flared up. “A ghost?”

“You think I’m mad, of course. No, no, I’m not mad. I
can’t say anything more for the moment. Perhaps. . . who
knows?. . . Nothing will happen. But don’t forget I warned
you.”

“Don’t be so mysterious. What’s all this about?”

“Keep a hold on yourself. Be prepared to meet. . .
anything. It sounds impossible I know, but try. It’s the
only advice I can give you. I can’t think of anything bet-
ter.”

“But what could I possibly meet?” I shouted.

Seeing him sitting there, looking sideways at me, his
sunburnt face drooping with fatigue, I found it difficult to
contain myself. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and
shake him.

Painfully, dragging the words out one by one, he an-
swered:

“I don’t know. In a way, it depends on you.”

“Hallucinations, you mean?”

“No. . . it’s real enough. Don’t attack. Whatever you do,
remember that!”

“What are you getting at?” I could hardly recognize the
sound of my own voice.

“We’re not on Earth, you know.”

“A Polytherian form?” I shouted. “There’s nothing hu-
man about them!”

I was about to rush at him, to drag him out of the trance,

prompted, apparently, by his crazy theories, when he
murmured:

“That’s why they’re so dangerous. Remember what I’ve
told you, and be on your guard!”

“What happened to Gibarian?”

He did not answer.

“What is Sartorius doing?”

“Come back in an hour.”

I turned and went out. As I closed the door behind me,
I took a last look at him. Tiny, shrunken, his head in his
hands and his elbows resting on his stained knees, he sat
there, motionless. It was only then that I noticed the dried
bloodstains on the backs of his hands.

The Solarists

In the empty corridor I stood for a moment in front of the
closed door. I noticed a strip of plaster carelessly stuck on
one of the panels. Pencilled on it was the word “Man!” At
the sight of this faintly scribbled word, I had a sudden
longing to return to Snow for company; but I thought
better of it.

His crazy warnings still ringing in my ears, I started off
down the narrow, tubular passage which was filled with the
moaning of the wind, my shoulders bowed under the
weight of the spacesuit. On tip-toe, half-consciously flee-
ing from some invisible watcher, I found two doors on my
left and two more on my right. I read the occupants’
names: Dr. Gibarian, Dr. Snow, Dr. Sartorius. On the
fourth, there was no nameplate. I hesitated, then pressed
the handle down gently and slowly opened the door. As I
did so, I had a premonition, amounting almost to a cer-
tainty, that there was someone inside. I went in.

There was no one. Another wide panoramic window,
almost as large as the one in the cabin where I had found
Snow, overhung the ocean, which, sunlit on this side,
shone with an oleaginous gleam, as though the waves
secreted a reddish oil. A crimson glow pervaded the
whole room, whose lay-out suggested a ship’s cabin. On
one side, flanked by book-filled shelves, a retractable bed

stood against the wall. On the other, between the numer-
ous lockers, hung nickel frames enclosing a series of
aerial photographs stuck end to end with adhesive tape,
and racks full of test-tubes and retorts plugged with cot-
ton-wool. Two tiers of white enamel boxes took up the
space beneath the window. I lifted some of the lids; the
boxes were crammed with all kinds of instruments, inter-
twined with plastic tubing. The corners of the room were
occupied by a refrigerator, a tap and a demisting device.
For lack of space on the big table by the window, a micro-
scope stood on the floor. Turning round, I saw a tall
locker beside the entrance door. It was half-open, filled
with atmosphere suits, laboratory smocks, insulated
aprons, underclothing, boots for planetary exploration,
and aluminium cylinders: portable oxygen gear. Two sets
of this equipment, complete with masks, hung down from
one of the knobs of the vertical bed. Everywhere there was
the same chaos, a general disorder which someone had
made a hasty attempt to disguise. I sniffed the air. I could
detect a faint smell of chemical reagents and traces of
something more acrid— chlorine? Instinctively I searched
the ceiling for the grills over the air-vents: strips of paper
attached to the bars were fluttering gently; the air was
circulating normally. In order to make a relatively free
space around the bed, between the bookshelves and the
locker, I cleared two chairs of their litter of books, instru-
ments, and tools, which I piled haphazardly on the other
side of the room.

I pulled out a bracket to hang up my spacesuit, took
hold of the zip-fastener, then let go again. Deterred by the
confused idea that I was depriving myself of a shield, I
could not bring myself to remove it. Once more I looked
round the room. I checked that the door was shut tight
and that it had no lock, and after a brief hesitation I
dragged some of the heaviest boxes to the doorway. Hav-
ing built this temporary barricade, I freed myself from my
clanking armor in three quick movements. A narrow
looking-glass, built into the locker door, reflected part of
the room, and out of the corner of my eye I caught sight
of something moving. I jumped, but it was only my own

reflection. Underneath the spacesuit, my overalls were
drenched with sweat. I took them off and pulled back a
sliding door, revealing the bright-tiled walls of a small
bathroom. A long, flat box lay in the hollow at the base of
the shower; I carried it into the room. As I put it down,
the springlid flew up and disclosed a number of compart-
ments filled with strange objects: mis-shapen forms in a
dark metal, grotesque replicas of the instruments in the
racks. Not one of the tools was usable; they were blunted,
distorted, melted, as though they had been in a furnace.
Strangest of all, even the porcelain handles, virtually in-
combustible, were twisted out of shape. Even at maximum
temperature, no laboratory furnace could have melted
them; only, perhaps, an atomic pile. I took a Geiger coun-
ter from the pocket on my spacesuit, but when I held it
over the debris, it remained dumb.

By now I was wearing nothing but my underwear. I tore
it off, flung it across the room and dashed under the
shower. The shock of the water did me good. Turning
beneath the scalding, needle-sharp jets, I scrubbed myself
vigorously, splashing the walls, expelling, eradicating
from my skin the thick scum of morbid apprehensions
which had pervaded me since my arrival.

I rummaged in the locker and found a work-suit which
could also be worn under an atmosphere suit. As I pock-
eted my few belongings, I felt something hard tucked
between the pages of my notebook: it was a key, the key
to my apartment, down there on Earth. Absently, I turned
it over in my fingers. Finally I put it down on the table. It
occurred to me suddenly that I might need a weapon. An
all-purpose pocket-knife was hardly sufficient for my
needs, but I had nothing else, and I was not going to start
searching for a gamma pistol or something else of the
kind.

I sat down on a tubular stool in the middle of the clear
space, glad to be alone, and seeing with satisfaction that
I had over half an hour to myself. (By nature, I have always
been scrupulous about keeping engagements, whether
important or trivial.) The hands of the clock, its face di-
vided into twenty-four hours, pointed to seven o’clock.

The sun was setting. 07.00 hours here was 20.00 hours on
board the Prometheus. On Moddard’s screens, Solaris
would be nothing but an indistinct dust-cloud, mingled
with the stars. But what did the Prometheus matter to me
now? I closed my eyes. I could hear no sound except the
moaning of the ventilation pipes and a faint trickling of
water from the bathroom.

If I had understood correctly, it was only a short time
since Gibarian had died. What had they done with his
body? Had they buried it? No, that was impossible on this
planet. I puzzled over the question for a long time, con-
centrating on the fate of the corpse; then, realizing the
absurdity of my thoughts, I began to pace up and down.
My toe knocked against a canvas bag half-buried under a
pile of books; I bent down and picked it up. It contained
a small bottle made of colored glass, so light that it might
have been blown out of paper. I held it up to the window
in the purplish glow of the somber twilight, now overhung
by a sooty fog. What was I doing, allowing myself to be
distracted by irrelevancies, by the first trifle which came
to hand?

I gave a start: the lights had gone on, activated by a
photo-electric relay; the sun had set. What would happen
next? I was so tense that the sensation of an empty space
behind me became unbearable. In an attempt to pull my-
self together, I took a chair over to the bookshelves and
chose a book familiar to me: the second volume of the
early monograph by Hughes and Eugel, Historia Solaris. I
rested the thick, solidly bound volume on my knees and
began leafing through the pages.

The discovery of Solaris dated from about 100 years
before I was born.

The planet orbits two suns: a red sun and a blue sun.
For 45 years after its discovery, no spacecraft had visited
Solaris. At that time, the Gamow-Shapley theory — that life
was impossible on planets which are satellites of two solar
bodies — was firmly believed. The orbit is constantly being
modified by variations in the gravitational pull in the
course of its revolutions around the two suns.

Due to these fluctuations in gravity, the orbit is either

flattened or distended and the elements of life, if they
appear, are inevitably destroyed, either by intense heat or
an extreme drop in temperature. These changes take
place at intervals estimated in millions of years — very
short intervals, that is, according to the laws of astronomy
and biology (evolution takes hundreds of millions of years
if not a billion).

According to the earliest calculations, in 500,000 years’
time Solaris would be drawn one half of an astronomic
unit nearer to its red sun, and a million years after that
would be engulfed by the incandescent star.

A few decades later, however, observations seemed to
suggest that the planet’s orbit was in no way subject to the
expected variations: it was stable, as stable as the orbit of
the planets in our own solar system.

The observations and calculations were reworked with
great precision; they simply confirmed the original con-
clusions: Solaris’s orbit was unstable.

A modest item among the hundreds of planets discov-
ered annually — to which official statistics devoted only a
few lines defining the characteristics of their orbits —
Solaris eventually began to attract special attention and
attain a high rank.

Four years after this promotion, overflying the planet
with the Laakon and two auxiliary craft, the Ottenskjold
expedition undertook a study of Solaris. This expedition
being in the nature of a preliminary, not to say improvised
reconnaissance, the scientists were not equipped for a
landing. Ottenskjold placed a quantity of automatic ob-
servation satellites into equatorial and polar orbit, their
principal function being to measure the gravitational pull.
In addition, a study was made of the planet’s surface,
which is covered by an ocean dotted with innumerable
flat, low-lying islands whose combined area is less than
that of Europe, although the diameter of Solaris is a fifth
greater than Earth’s. These expanses of barren, rocky
territory, irregularly distributed, are largely concentrated
in the southern hemisphere. At the same time the compo-
sition of the atmosphere — devoid of oxygen — was
analyzed, and precise measurements made of the planet’s

density, from which its albedo and other astronomical
characteristics were determined. As was foreseeable, no
trace of life was discovered, either on the islands or in the
ocean.

During the following ten years, Solaris became the cen-
ter of attraction for all observatories concerned with the
study of this region of space, for the planet had in the
meantime shown the astonishing faculty of maintaining
an orbit which ought, without any shadow of doubt, to
have been unstable. The problem almost developed into
a scandal: since the results of the observations could only
be inaccurate, attempts were made (in the interests of
science) to denounce and discredit various scientists or
else the computers they used.

Lack of funds delayed the departure of a proper Solaris
expedition for three years. Finally Shannahan assembled
his team and obtained three C-tonnage vessels from the
Institute, the largest starships of the period. A year and
a half before the arrival of the expedition, which left from
the region of Alpha in Aquarius, a second exploration
fleet, acting in the name of the Institute, placed an auto-
matic satellite — Luna 247 — into orbit around Solaris.
This satellite, after three successive reconstructions at
roughly ten-year intervals, is still functioning today. The
data it supplied confirmed beyond doubt the findings of
the Ottenskjold expedition concerning the active charac-
ter of the ocean’s movements.

One of Shannahan’s ships remained in orbit, while the
two others, after some preliminary attempts, landed in the
southern hemisphere, in a rocky area about 600 miles
square. The work of the expedition lasted eighteen
months and was carried out under favorable conditions,
apart from an unfortunate accident brought about by the
malfunction of some apparatus. In the meantime, the
scientists had split into two opposing camps; the bone of
contention was the ocean. On the basis of the analyses, it
had been accepted that the ocean was an organic forma-
tion (at that time, no one had yet dared to call it living).
But, while the biologists considered it as a primitive for-
mation — a sort of gigantic entity, a fluid cell, unique and

monstrous (which they called ‘prebiological’), surround-
ing the globe with a colloidal envelope several miles thick
in places — the astronomers and physicists asserted that it
must be an organic structure, extraordinarily evolved. Ac-
cording to them, the ocean possibly exceeded terrestrial
organic structures in complexity, since it was capable of
exerting an active influence on the planet’s orbital path.
Certainly, no other factor could be found that might ex-
plain the behavior of Solaris; moreover, the planeto-
physicists had established a relationship between certain
processes of the plasmic ocean and the local measure-
ments of gravitational pull, which altered according to the
‘matter transformations’ of the ocean.

Consequently it was the physicists, rather than the bi-
ologists, who put forward the paradoxical formulation of
a ‘plasmic mechanism,’ implying by this a structure, pos-
sibly without life as we conceive it, but capable of per-,
forming functional activities — on an astronomic scale,it
should be emphasized.

It was during this quarrel, whose reverberations soon
reached the ears of the most eminent authorities, that the
Gamow-Shapley doctrine, unchallenged for eighty years,
was shaken for the first time.

There were some who continued to support the Ga-
mow-Shapley contentions, to the effect that the ocean had
nothing to do with life, that it was neither ‘parabiological’
nor ‘prebiological’ but a geological formation — of ex-
treme rarity, it is true — with the unique ability to stabilize
the orbit of Solaris, despite the variations in the forces of
attraction. Le Chatelier’s law was enlisted in support of
this argument.

To challenge this conservative attitude, new hypotheses
were advanced — of which Civito-Vitta’s was one of the
most elaborate — proclaiming that the ocean was the
product of a dialectical development: on the basis of its
earliest pre-oceanic form, a solution of slow-reacting
chemical elements, and by the force of circumstances (the
threat to its existence from the changes of orbit), it had
reached in a single bound the stage of ‘homeostatic
ocean,’ without passing through all the stages of terres-

trial evolution, by-passing the unicellular and multicellu-
lar phases, the vegetable and the animal, the development
of a nervous and cerebral system. In other words, unlike
terrestrial organisms, it had not taken hundreds of mil-
lions of years to adapt itself to its environment — cul-
minating in the first representatives of a species endowed
with reason — but dominated its environment immedi-
ately.

This was an original point of view. Nevertheless, the
means whereby this colloidal envelope was able to stabil-
ize the planet’s orbit remained unknown. For almost a
century, devices had existed capable of creating artificial
magnetic and gravitational fields; they were called gravit-
ors. But no one could even guess how this formless glue
could produce an effect which the gravitors achieved by
the use of complicated nuclear reactions and enormously
high temperatures. The newspapers of the day, exciting
the curiosity of the layman and the anger of the scientist,
were full of the most improbable embroideries on the
theme of the ‘Solaris Mystery,’ one reporter going so far
as to suggest that the ocean was, no less, a distant relation
to our electric eels!

Just when a measure of success had been achieved in
unravelling this problem, it turned out, as often happened
subsequently in the field of Solarist studies, that the expla-
nation replaced one enigma by another, perhaps even
more baffling.

Observations showed, at least, that the ocean did not
react according to the same principles as our gravitors
(which, in any case, would have been impossible), but
succeeded in controlling the orbital periodicity directly.
One result, among others, was the discovery of discrep-
ancies in the measurement of time along one and the
same meridian on Solaris. Thus the ocean was not only in
a sense “aware” of the Einstein-Boevia theory; it was also
capable of exploiting the implications of the latter (which
was more than we could say of ourselves).

With the publication of this hypothesis, the scientific
world was torn by one of the most violent controversies
of the century. Revered and universally accepted theories

foundered; the specialist literature was swamped by out-
rageous and heretical treatises; ‘sentient ocean’ or ‘gravi-
ty-controlling colloid’ — the debate became a burning
issue.

All this happened several years before I was born.
When I was a student — new data having accumulated in
the meantime — it was already generally agreed that there
was life on Solaris, even if it was limited to a single inhabi-
tant.

The second volume of Hughes and Eugel, which I was
still leafing through mechanically, began with a systemati-
zation that was as ingenious as it was amusing. The table
of classification comprised three definitions: Type: Po-
lythera; Class: Syncytialia; Category: Metamorph.

It might have been thought that we knew of an infinite
number of examples of the species, whereas in reality
there was only the one — weighing, it is true, some seven
hundred billion tons.

Multicolored illustrations, picturesque graphs, analyti-
cal summaries and spectral diagrams flickered through
my fingers, explaining the type and rhythm of the funda-
mental transformations as well as the chemical reactions.
Rapidly, infallibly, the thick tome led the reader on to the
solid ground of mathematical certitude. One might have
assumed that we knew everything there was to be known
about this representative of the category Metamorph,
which lay some hundreds of metres below the metal hull
of the Station, obscured at the moment by the shadows of
the four-hour night.

In fact, by no means everybody was yet convinced that
the ocean was actually a living ‘creature,’ and still less, it
goes without saying, a rational one. I put the heavy volume
back on the shelf and took up the one next to it, which was
in two parts. The first part was devoted to a resume of the
countless attempts to establish contact with the ocean. I
could well remember how, when I was a student, these
attempts were the subject of endless anecdotes, jokes and
witticisms. Compared with the proliferation of specula-
tive ideas which were triggered off by this problem, medi-
eval scholasticism seemed a model of scientific

enlightenment. The second part, nearly 1500 pages long,
was devoted exclusively to the bibliography of the subject.
There would not have been enough room for the books
themselves in the cabin in which I was sitting.

The first attempts at contact were by means of specially
designed electronic apparatus. The ocean itself took an
active part in these operations by remodelling the instru-
ments. All this, however, remained somewhat obscure.
What exactly did the ocean’s ‘participation’ consist of? It
modified certain elements in the submerged instruments,
as a result of which the normal discharge frequency was
completely disrupted and the recording instruments reg-
istered a profusion of signals — fragmentary indications
of some outlandish activity, which in fact defeated all at-
tempts at analysis. Did these data point to a momentary
condition of stimulation, or to regular impulses cor-
related with the gigantic structures which the ocean was
in the process of creating elsewhere, at the antipodes of
the region under investigation? Had the electronic ap-
paratus recorded the cryptic manifestation of the ocean’s
ancient secrets? Had it revealed its innermost workings to
us? Who could tell? No two reactions to the stimuli were
the same. Sometimes the instruments almost exploded
under the violence of the impulses, sometimes there was
total silence; it was impossible to obtain a repetition of
any previously observed phenomenon. Constantly, it
seemed, the experts were on the brink of deciphering the
ever-growing mass of information. Was it not, after all,
with this object in mind that computers had been built of
virtually limitless capacity, such as no previous problem
had ever demanded?

And, indeed, some results were obtained. The ocean as
a source of electric and magnetic impulses and of gravita-
tion expressed itself in a more or less mathematical lan-
guage. Also, by calling on the most abstruse branches of
statistical analysis, it was possible to classify certain fre-
quencies in the discharges of current. Structural homo-
logues were discovered, not unlike those already
observed by physicists in that sector of science which
deals with the reciprocal interaction of energy and matter.

elements and compounds, the finite and the infinite. This
correspondence convinced the scientists that they were
confronted with a monstrous entity endowed with reason,
a protoplasmic ocean-brain enveloping the entire planet
and idling its time away in extravagant theoretical cogni-
tation about the nature of the universe. Our instruments
had intercepted minute random fragments of a prodi-
gious and everlasting monologue unfolding in the depths
of this colossal brain, which was inevitably beyond our
understanding.

So much for the mathematicians. These hypotheses,
according to some people, underestimated the resources
of the human mind; they bowed to the unknown, pro-
claiming the ancient doctrine, arrogantly resurrected, of
ignoramus et ignorabimus. Others regarded the mathemati-
cians’ hypotheses as sterile and dangerous nonsense,
contributing towards the creation of a modern mythology
based on the notion of this giant brain — whether plasmic
or electronic was immaterial — as the ultimate objective of
existence, the very synthesis of life.

Yet others. . . but the would-be experts were legion and
each had his own theory. A comparison of the ‘contact’
school of thought with other branches of Solarist studies,
in which specialization had rapidly developed, especially
during the last quarter of a century, made it clear that a
Solarist-cybernetician had difficulty in making himself un-
derstood to a Solarist-symmetriadologist. Veubeke, di-
rector of the Institute when I was studying there, had
asked jokingly one day: “How do you expect to communi-
cate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one
another?” The jest contained more than a grain of truth.

The decision to categorize the ocean as a metamorph
was not an arbitrary one. Its undulating surface was capa-
ble of generating extremely diverse formations which
resembled nothing ever seen on Earth, and the function
of these sudden eruptions of plasmic ‘creativity,’ whether
adaptive, explorative or what, remained an enigma.

Lifting the heavy volume with both hands, I replaced it
on the shelf, and thought to myself that our scholarship,
all the information accumulated in the libraries.

amounted to a useless jumble of words, a sludge of state-
ments and suppositions, and that we had not progressed
an inch in the 78 years since researches had begun. The
situation seemed much worse now than in the time of the
pioneers, since the assiduous efforts of so many years had
not resulted in a single indisputable conclusion.

The sum total of known facts was strictly negative. The
ocean did not use machines, even though in certain cir-
cumstances it seemed capable of creating them. During
the first two years of exploratory work, it had reproduced
elements of some of the submerged instruments. There-
after, it simply ignored the experiments we went on pur-
suing, as though it had lost all interest in our instruments
and our activities — as though, indeed, it was no longer
interested in us. It did not possess a nervous system (to
go on with the inventory of ‘negative knowledge’) or cells,
and its structure was not proteiform. It did not always
react even to the most powerful stimuli (it ignored com-
pletely, for example, the catastrophic accident which oc-
curred during the second Giese expedition: an auxiliary
rocket, falling from a height of 300,000 metres, crashed
on the planet’s surface and the radioactive explosion of its
nuclear reserves destroyed the plasma within a radius of
2500 metres).

Gradually, in scientific circles, the ‘Solaris Affair’ came
to be regarded as a lost cause, notably among the ad-
ministrators of the Institute, where voices had recently
been raised suggesting that financial support should be
withdrawn and research suspended. No one, until then,
had dared to suggest the final liquidation of the Station;
such a decision would have smacked too obviously of de-
feat. But in the course of semi-official discussions a num-
ber of scientists recommended an ‘honorable’ withdrawal
from Solaris.

Many people in the world of science, however, espe-
cially among the young, had unconsciously come to re-
gard the ‘affair’ as a touchstone of individual values. All
things considered, they claimed, it was not simply a ques-
tion of penetrating Solarist civilization, it was essentially
a test of ourselves, of the limitations of human knowledge.

For some time, there was a widely held notion (zealously
fostered by the daily press) to the effect that the ‘thinking
ocean’ of Solaris was a gigantic brain, prodigiously well-
developed and several million years in advance of our own
civilization, a sort of ‘cosmic yogi,’ a sage, a symbol of
omniscience, which had long ago understood the vanity of
all action and for this reason had retreated into an un-
breakable silence. The notion was incorrect, for the living
ocean was active. Not, it is true, according to human ideas
— it did not build cities or bridges, nor did it manufacture
flying machines. It did not try to reduce distances, nor was
it concerned with the conquest of Space (the ultimate
criterion, some people thought, of man’s superiority). But
it was engaged in a never-ending process of transforma-
tion, an ‘ontological autometamorphosis.’ (There were
any amount of scientific neologisms in accounts of Sola-
rist activities.) Moreover, any scientist who devotes him-
self to the study of Solariana has the indelible impression
that he can discern fragments of an intelligent structure,
perhaps endowed with genius, haphazardly mingled with
outlandish phenomena, apparently the product of an un-
hinged mind. Thus was born the conception of the ‘autis-
tic ocean’ as opposed to the ‘ocean-yogi.’

These hypotheses resurrected one of the most ancient
of philosophical problems: the relation between matter
and mind, and between mind and consciousness. Du
Haart was the first to have the audacity to maintain that the
ocean possessed a consciousness. The problem, which
the methodologists hastened to dub metaphysical, pro-
voked all kinds of arguments and discussions. Was it pos-
sible for thought to exist without consciousness? Could
one, in any case, apply the word thought to the processes
observed in the ocean? Is a mountain only a huge stone?
Is a planet an enormous mountain? Whatever the ter-
minology, the new scale of size introduced new norms
and new phenomena.

The question appeared as a contemporary version of
the problem of squaring the circle. Every independent
thinker endeavored to register his personal contribution
to the hoard of Solarist studies. New theories prolifer-
ated: the ocean was evidence of a state of degeneration,

of regression, following a phase of ‘intellectual repletion;’
it was a deviant neoplasm, the product of the bodies of
former inhabitants of the planet, whom it had devoured,
swallowed up, dissolving and blending the residue into
this unchanging, self-propagating form, supracellular in
structure.

By the white light of the fluorescent tubes — a pale imita-
tion of terrestrial daylight — I cleared the table of its clut-
ter of apparatus and books. Arms outstretched and my
hands gripping the chromium edging, I unrolled a map of
Solaris on the plastic surface and studied it at length. The
living ocean had its peaks and its canyons. Its islands,
which were covered with a decomposing mineral deposit,
were certainly related to the nature of the ocean bed. But
did it control the eruption and subsidence of the rocky
formations buried in its depths? No one knew. Gazing at
the big flat projection of the two hemispheres, colored in
various tones of blue and purple, I experienced once
again that thrill of wonder which had so often gripped me,
and which I had felt as a schoolboy on learning of the
existence of Solaris for the first time.

Lost in contemplation of this bewildering map, my
mind in a daze, I temporarily forgot the mystery sur-
rounding Gibarian’s death and the uncertainty of my own
future.

The different sections of the ocean were named after
the scientists who had explored them. I was examining
Thexall’s swell, which surrounded the equatorial ar-
chipelagos, when I had a sudden sensation of being
watched.

I was still leaning over the map, but I no longer saw it;
my limbs were in the grip of a sort of paralysis. The crates
and a small locker still barricaded the door, which was in
front of me. It’s only a robot, I told myself— yet I had not
discovered any in the room and none could have entered
without my knowledge. My back and my neck seemed to
be on fire; the sensation of this relentless, fixed stare was
becoming unbearable. With my head shrinking between
my hunched shoulders, I leant harder and harder against
the table, until it began slowly to slide away. The move-
ment released me; I spun round.

The room was empty. There was nothing in front of me
except the wide convex window and, beyond it, the night.
But the same sensation persisted. The night stared me in
the face, amorphous, blind, infinite, without frontiers.
Not a single star relieved the darkness behind the glass.
I pulled the thick curtains. I had been in the Station less
than an hour, yet already I was showing signs of morbid-
ity. Was it the effect of Gibarian’s death? In so far as I
knew him, I had imagined that nothing could shake his
nerve: now, I was no longer so sure.

I stood in the middle of the room, beside the table. My
breathing became more regular, I felt the sweat chill on
my forehead. What was it I had been thinking about a
moment ago? Ah, yes, robots! It was surprising that I had
not come across one anywhere on the Station. What could
have become of them all? The only one with which I had
been in contact — at a distance — belonged to the vehicle
reception services. But what about the others?

I looked at my watch. It was time to rejoin Snow.

I left the room. The dome was feebly lit by luminous
filaments running the length of the ceiling. I went up to
Gibarian’s door and stood there, motionless. There was
total silence. I gripped the handle. I had in fact no inten-
tion of going in, but the handle went down and the door
opened, disclosing a chink of darkness. The lights went
on. In one quick movement, I entered and silently closed
the door behind me. Then I turned round.

My shoulders brushed against the door panels. The
room was larger than mine. A curtain decorated with little
pink and blue flowers (not regulation Station equipment,
but no doubt brought from Earth with his personal be-
longings) covered three-quarters of the panoramic win-
dow. Around the walls were book-shelves and cupboards,
painted pale green with silvery highlights. Both shelves
and cupboards had been emptied of their contents, which
were piled into heaps, amongst the furniture. At my feet,
blocking the way, were two overturned trolleys buried
beneath a heap of periodicals spilling out of bulging brief
cases which had burst open. Books with their pages
splayed out fanwise were stained with colored liquids

which had spilt from broken retorts and bottles with cor-
roded stoppers, receptacles made of such thick glass that
a single fall, even from a considerable height, could not
have shattered them in such a way. Beneath the window lay
an overturned desk, an anglepoise lamp crumpled under-
neath it; two legs of an upturned stool were stuck in the
half-open drawers. A flood of papers of every conceivable
size swamped the floor. My interest quickened as I recog-
nized Gibarian’s hand-writing. As I stooped to gather
together the loose sheets, I noticed that my hand was
casting a double shadow.

I straightened up. The pink curtain glowed brightly,
traversed by a streak of incandescent, steely-blue light
which was gradually widening. I pulled the curtain aside.
An unbearable glare extended along the horizon, chasing
before it an army of spectral shadows, which rose up from
among the waves and dispersed in the direction of the
Station. It was the dawn. After an hour of darkness the
planet’s second sun — the blue sun — was rising in the sky.

The automatic switch cut off the lights as I returned to
the heap of papers. The first thing I came across was a
detailed description of an experiment, evidently decided
upon three weeks before. Gibarian had planned to expose
the plasma to an intensive bombardment of X-rays. I
gathered from the context that the paper was addressed
to Sartorius, whose job it was to organize operations.
What I was holding in my hand was a copy of the plan.

The whiteness of the paper hurt my eyes. This new day
was different from the previous one. In the warm glow of
the red sun, mists overhung a black ocean with blood-red
reflections, and waves, clouds and sky were almost con-
stantly veiled in a crimson haze. Now, the blue sun
pierced the flower-printed curtain with a crystalline light.
My suntanned hands looked grey. The room had
changed; all the red-reflecting objects had lost their luster
and had turned a greyish-brown, whereas those which
were white, green and yellow had acquired a vivid bril-
liance and seemed to give off their own light. Screwing up
my eyes, I risked another glance through a chink in the
curtain: an expanse of molten metal trembled and shim-

mered under a white-hot sky. I shut my eyes and drew
back. On the shelf above the wash-basin (which had re-
cently been badly chipped) I found a pair of dark glasses,
so big that when I put them on they covered half my face.
The curtain appeared to glow with a sodium light. I went
on reading, picking up the sheets of paper and arranging
them on the only usable table. There were gaps in the text,
and I searched in vain for the missing pages.

I came across a report of experiments already carried
out, and learned that, for four days running, Gibarian and
Sartorius had submitted the ocean to radiation at a point
1400 miles from the present position of the Station. The
use of X-rays was banned by a UN convention, because of
their harmful effects, and I was certain that no one had
sent a request to Earth for authorization to proceed with
such experiments.

Looking up, I caught sight of my face in the mirror of
a half-open locker door: masked by the dark glasses, it was
deathly pale. The room, too, glinting with blue and white
reflections, looked equally bizarre; but soon there came a
prolonged screech of metal as the air-tight outer shutters
slid across the window. There was an instant of darkness,
and then the lights came on; they seemed to me to be
curiously dim. It grew hotter and hotter. The regular
drone of the air-conditioning was now a high-pitched
whine: the Station’s refrigeration plant was running at full
capacity. Nevertheless, the overpowering heat grew more
and more intense.

I heard footsteps. Someone was walking through the
dome. In two silent strides, I reached the door. The foot-
steps slowed down; whoever it was was behind it. The
handle moved. Automatically, without thinking, I gripped
it. The pressure did not increase, but nor did it relax.
Neither of us, on either side of the door, said a word. We
remained there, motionless, each of us holding the han-
dle. Suddenly it straightened up again, freeing itself from
my grasp. The muffled footsteps receded. With my ear
glued to the panel, I went on listening. I heard nothing
more.

The Visitors

I hastily pocketed Gibarian’s notes and went over to the
locker. Work-suits and clothes had been pushed to one
side as though someone had hidden himself at the back.
On the floor I saw the corner of an envelope sticking out
from a heap of papers and picked it up. It was addressed
to me. Dry-mouthed with apprehension, I tore it open; I
had to force myself to unfold the note inside.

In his even handwriting, small but perfectly legible,
Gibarian had written two lines:

Supplement Dir. Solar. Vol 1.: Vot. Separat.

Messenger ds aff. F.; Ravintzer: The Little Apocrypha.

That was all, not another word. Did these two lines
contain some vital piece of information? When had he
written them? I told myself that the first thing to do was
to consult the library index. I knew the supplement to the
first volume of the annual of Solarist studies; or rather,
without having read it, I knew of its existence — but was it
not a document of purely historical interest? As for Ra-
vintzer and The Little Apocrypha, I had never heard of them.

What next?

I was already a quarter of an hour late for my meeting
with Snow. With my back to the door, I looked the room
over carefully once more. Only then did I notice the bed
standing up against the wall, half concealed by a large map

of Solaris. Something was hanging down behind the map;
it was a pocket tape-recorder, and I noted that nine tenths
of the tape had been used. I took the machine out of its
case (which I hung back where I had found it) and slipped
it into my pocket.

Before leaving, I listened intently with my eyes closed.
There was no sound from outside. I opened the door on
to a yawning gulf of darkness — until it occurred to me to
remove my dark glasses. The dome was feebly lit by the
glowing filaments in the ceiling.

A number of corridors spread out in a star-shaped pat-
tern between the four doors of the sleeping quarters and
the narrow passage leading to the radio-cabin. Suddenly,
looming up in the opening which led to the communal
bathroom, a tall silhouette appeared, barely distinguisha-
ble in the surrounding gloom. I stood stock still, frozen
to the spot. A giant Negress was coming silently towards
me with a smooth, rolling gait. I caught a gleam from the
whites of her eyes and heard the soft slapping of her bare
feet. She was wearing nothing but a yellow skirt of plaited
straw; her enormous breasts swung freely and her black
arms were as thick as thighs. Less than a yard separated
us as she passed me, but she did not give me so much as
a glance. She went on her way, her grass skirt swinging
rhythmically, resembling one of those steatopygous stat-
ues in anthropological museums. She opened Gibarian’s
door and on the threshold her silhouette stood out dis-
tinctly against the bright light from inside the room. Then
she closed the door behind her and I was alone.

Terror-stricken, I stared blankly round the big, empty
hall. What had happened? What had I seen? Suddenly, my
mind reeled as I recalled Snow’s warnings. Who was this
monstrous Aphrodite? I took a step, a single pace, in the
direction of Gibarian’s room, but I knew perfectly well
that I would not go in.

I do not know how long I remained leaning against the
cool metal wall, hearing nothing except the distant,
monotonous whine of the air-conditioners. Eventually I
pulled myself together and made my way to the radio-

cabin. As I pressed down the door handle, I heard a harsh
voice:

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Kelvin.”

Snow was seated at a table between a pile of aluminum
crates and the transmitter, eating meat concentrate
straight out of a tin. Did he then never leave the place?
Dazedly, I watched him chewing until I realized that I, too,
was famished. I went to a cupboard, selected the least
dusty plate I could find, and sat down opposite Snow. We
ate in silence.

Snow got up, uncorked a vacuum flask and filled two
tumblers with clear, hot soup. Then he put the flask down
on the floor; there was no room on the table.

“Have you seen Sartorius?” he asked.

“No. Where is he?”

“Upstairs.”

Upstairs: that meant the laboratory. We finished our
meal without exchanging another word, Snow dutifully
scraping the bottom of his tin. The outer shutter was in
place over the window and reflections from the four ceil-
ing lights gleamed on the laminated surface of the trans-
mitter. Snow had put on a loose black sweater, frayed at
the wrists. The taut skin over his cheekbones was marbled
with tiny blood-vessels.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing, why?”

“You’re pouring with sweat.”

I wiped my forehead. It was true, I was dripping wet; it
must have been reaction, after my unexpected encounter.
Snow gave me a questioning glance. Should I tell him? If
only he had taken me into his confidence. . . What incom-
prehensible game was being played here, and who was
whose enemy?

“It’s hot. I should have expected your air-conditioning
to work better than this!”

“It adjusts itself automatically every hour.” He looked
at me closely. “Are you sure it’s only the heat?”

I did not answer. He tossed the utensils and the empty

tins into the sink, returned to his armchair and went on
with his interrogation.

“What are your plans?”

“That depends on you,” I answered coolly. “I suppose
you have a research programme? A new stimulus, X-rays,
that sort of thing. .

He frowned.

“X-rays? Who’s been talking to you about that?”

“I don’t remember. Someone dropped a hint— on the
Prometheus perhaps. Why, have you begun?”

“I don’t know the details, it was an idea of Gibarian’s.
He and Sartorius set it up together. I wonder how you
could have heard of it.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Funny that you shouldn’t know the details. You ought
to, since you’re the one who. .

I left the sentence unfinished; Snow said nothing.

The whining of the air-conditioners had stopped. The
temperature stayed at a bearable level, but a high-pitched
drone persisted, like the buzzing of a dying insect.

Snow got up from his chair and leaned over the console
of the transmitter. He began to press knobs at random,
and to no effect, since he had left the activating switch off.
He went on fidgeting with them for a moment, then he
remarked:

“There are certain formalities to be dealt with concern-
ing. .

“Yes?” I prompted, to his back.

He turned round and gave me a hostile look. Involun-
tarily, I had annoyed him; but ignorant of the role he was
playing, I could only wait and see. His Adam’s apple rose
and fell inside the collar of his sweater:

“You’ve been into Gibarian’s room,” he blurted out
accusingly.

I looked at him calmly.

“You have been in there, haven’t you?”

“If you say so. .

“Was there anyone there?”

So he had seen her, or, at least, knew of her existence!

“No, no one. Who could there have been?”

“Why didn’t you let me in, then?”

“Because I was afraid. I thought of your warnings and
when the handle moved, I automatically hung on to it.
Why didn’t you say it was you? I would have let you in.”

“I thought it was Sartorius,” he answered, in a faltering
voice.

“And suppose it had been?”

Once again, he parried my question with one of his
own.

“What do you think happened in there?”

I hesitated.

“You’re the one who should know. Where is he?”

“Gibarian? In the cold store. We took him there
straight away this morning, after we’d found him in the
locker.”

“The locker? Was he dead?”

“His heart was still beating, but he had stopped breath-
ing.”

“Did you try resuscitation?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t have the chance,” he mumbled. “By the time
I’d moved him, he was dead.”

Snow picked up a sheet of paper from the fitted desk in
the corner and held it out to me.

“I have drafted a post-mortem report. I’m not sorry
you’ve seen the room, as a matter of fact. Cause of death
— pernostal injection, lethal dose. It’s all here. . .”

I ran my eyes over the paper, and murmured:

“Suicide? For what reason?”

“Nervous troubles, depression, call it what you like.
You know more about that sort of thing than I do.”

I was still seated; Snow was standing over me.

Looking him in the eye, I said:

“I only know what I’ve seen for myself.”

“What are you trying to say?” he asked calmly.

“He injected himself with pernostal and hid in the
locker, right? In that case, it’s not a question of nervous
troubles or a fit of depression, but of a very serious para-
noid condition.” Speaking more and more deliberately

and continuing to look him in the eyes, I added: “What is
certain is that he thought he saw something.”

Snow began fiddling with the transmitter again.

After a moment’s silence, I went on.

“Your signature’s here. What about Sartorius’s?”

“As I told you, he’s in the laboratory. He never shows
his face. I suppose he’s. .

“What?”

“Locked himself in.”

“Locked himself in? I see. . . you mean he’s barricaded
himself in?”

“Possibly.”

“Snow, there’s someone on the Station. Someone apart
from us.”

He had stopped playing with the knobs and was leaning
sideways, staring at me.

“You’ve seen it!”

“You warned me. Against what? Against whom? An
hallucination?”

“What did you see?”

“Shall we say. . . a human being?”

He remained silent. Turning his back as though to hide
his face from me, he tapped the metal plating with his
finger-tips. I looked at his hands; there was no longer any
trace of blood between the fingers. I had a brief moment
of dizziness.

In scarcely more than a whisper, as though I were im-
parting a secret and afraid of being overheard, I said:

“It’s not a mirage, is it? It’s a real person, someone you
can touch, someone you can. . . draw blood from. And
what’s more, someone you’ve seen only today.”

“How do you know?”

He had not moved; his face was still obstinately turned
to the wall and I was addressing his back.

“It was before I arrived, just before I arrived, wasn’t
it?”

His whole body contracted, and I could see his panic-
stricken expression.

“What about you?” he said in a strangled voice, “who
are you?”

I thought he was about to attack me. It was not at all the
reaction I had expected. The situation was becoming gro-
tesque. Obviously, he did not believe that I was who I
claimed to be. But what could this mean? He was becom-
ing more and more terrified of me. Was he delirious?
Could he have been affected by unfiltered gases from the
planet’s atmosphere? Anything seemed possible. And
then again, I too had seen this . . . creature, so what about
me?

“Who is she?” I asked.

These words reassured him. For a moment, he looked
at me searchingly, as though he was still doubtful of me;
then he collapsed into his chair and put his head in his
hands. Even before he opened his mouth, I knew that he
had still not made up his mind to give me a direct answer.

“I’m worn out,” he said weakly.

“Who is she?” I insisted.

“If you don’t know. . . ”

“Go on, know what?”

“Nothing.”

“Listen, Snow! We are isolated, completely cut off.
Let’s put our cards on the table. Things are confused
enough as it is. You’ve got to tell me what you know!”

“What about you?” he retorted, suspiciously.

“All right, I’ll tell you and then you tell me. Don’t worry,
I shan’t think you’re mad.”

“Mad! Good God!” He tried to smile. “But you haven’t
understood a thing, not a single thing. He never for one
moment thought that he was mad. If he had he would
never have done it. He would still be alive.”

“In other words, your report, this business of nervous
troubles, is a fabrication.”

“Of course.”

“Why not write the truth?”

“Why?” he repeated.

A long silence followed. It was true that I was still com-
pletely in the dark. I had been under the impression that
I had overcome his doubts and that we were going to pool
our resources to solve the enigma. Why, then, was he
refusing to talk?

“Where are the robots?”

“In the store-rooms. We’ve locked them all away; only
the reception robots are operational.”

“Why?”

Once more, he refused to answer.

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

“I can’t.”

He seemed constantly on the point of unburdening
himself, only to pull himself up at the last moment. Per-
haps I would do better to tackle Sartorius. Then I remem-
bered the letter and, as I thought of it, realized how
important it was.

“Do you intend continuing with the experiments?”

He gave a contemptuous shrug:

“What good would that do?”

“Oh — in that case, what do you suggest we do?”

He was silent. In the distance, there was a faint noise of
bare feet padding over the floor. The muffled echo of
these shuffling steps reverberated eerily among the nick-
el-plated and laminated equipment and the tall shafts,
furrowed with glass tubes, which encased the complicated
electronic installations.

Unable to control myself any longer, I stood up. As I
listened to the approaching footsteps, I watched Snow.
Behind the drooping lids, his eyes showed no fear. Was
he not afraid of her, then?

“Where does she come from?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

The sound of the footsteps faded, then died away.

“Don’t you believe me?” he said. “I swear to you that
I don’t know.”

In the silence that followed, I opened a locker, pushed
the clumsy atmosphere-suits aside and found, as I ex-
pected, hanging at the back, the gas pistols used for ma-
noeuvering in space. I took one out, checked the charge,
and slung the harness over my shoulder. It was not,
strictly speaking, a weapon, but it was better than nothing.

As I was adjusting a strap. Snow showed his yellow
teeth in a mocking grin.

“Good hunting!” he said.

I turned towards the door.

“Thanks.”

He dragged himself out of his chair.

“Kelvin!”

I looked at him. He was no longer smiling. I have never
seen such an expression of weariness on anyone’s face.
He mumbled:

“Kelvin, it isn’t that. . . Really, I. . . I can’t. . . ”

I waited; his lips moved, but uttered no sound. I turned
on my heel and went out.

Sartorius

I followed a long, empty corridor, then forked right. I had
never lived on the Station, but during my training on
Earth I had spent six weeks in an exact replica of it; when
I reached a short aluminum stairway, 1 knew where it led.

The library was in darkness, and I had to fumble for the
light switch. I first consulted the index, then dialled the
coordinates for the first volume of the Solarist Annual and
its Supplement. A red light came on. I turned to the regis-
ter: the two books were marked out to Gibarian, together
with The Little Apocrypha. I switched the lights off and re-
turned to the lower deck.

In spite of having heard the footsteps receding, I was
afraid to re-enter Gibarian’s room. She might return. I
hesitated for some time outside the door; finally, pressing
down the handle, I forced myself to go in.

There was no one in the room. I began rummaging
through the books scattered beneath the window, inter-
rupting my search only to close the locker door: I could
not bear the sight of the empty space among the work-
suits.

The supplement was not in the first pile, so, one by one,
I started methodically picking up the rest of the books
around the room. When I reached the final pile, between

the bed and the wardrobe, I found the volume I was look-
ing for.

I was hoping to find some sort of clue and, sure enough,
a book-marker had been slipped between the pages of the
index. A name, unfamiliar to me, had been underlined in
red: Andre Berton. The corresponding page numbers
indicated two different chapters; glancing at the first, I
learnt that Berton was a reserve pilot on Shannahan’s
ship. The second reference appeared about a hundred
pages further on.

At first, it seemed, Shannahan’s expedition had pro-
ceeded with extreme caution. When, however, after six-
teen days, the plasmatic ocean had not only shown no
signs of aggression, but appeared to shun any direct con-
tact with men and machines, recoiling whenever anything
approached its surface, Shannahan and his deputy, Timo-
lis, discontinued some of the precautions which were hin-
dering the progress of their work. The force fences which
had been used to demarcate and protect the working
areas were taken back to base, and the expedition split up
into groups of two or three men, some groups making
reconnaissance flights over a radius of some several hun-
dred miles.

Apart from some unexpected damage to the oxygen-
supply systems — the atmosphere had an unusually corro-
sive effect on the valves, which had to be replaced almost
daily — four days passed without mishap. On the morning
of the fifth day — 21 days after the arrival of the expedition
— two scientists, Carucci and Fechner (the first a radiobi-
ologist, the second a physicist), left on a mission aboard
a hovercraft. Six hours later, the explorers were overdue.
Timolis, who was in charge of the base in Shannahan’s
absence, raised the alarm and diverted every available
man into search-parties.

By a fatal combination of circumstances, long-range
radio contact had been cut that morning an hour after the
departure of the exploration groups — a large spot had
appeared on the red sun, producing a heavy bombard-
ment of charged particles in the upper atmosphere. Only

the ultra-shortwave transmitters continued to function,
and contact was restricted to a radius of about twenty
miles. As a crowning stroke of bad luck, a thick fog de-
scended just before sunset and the search had to be called
off.

The rescue teams were returning to base when the
hovercraft was spotted by a flitter, barely 24 miles from
the command-ship. The engine was running and the ma-
chine, at first sight undamaged, was hovering above the
waves. Carucci alone could be seen, semi-conscious, in
the glass-domed cockpit.

The hovercraft was escorted back to base. After treat-
ment, Carucci quickly regained consciousness, but could
throw no light on Fechner’s disappearance. Just after they
had decided to return to base a valve in his oxygen-gear
had failed and a small amount of unfiltered gas had pene-
trated his atmosphere-suit. In an attempt to repair the
valve, Fechner had been forced to undo his safety belt and
stand up. That was the last thing Carucci could remem-
ber.

According to the experts who reconstructed the se-
quence of events, Fechner must have opened the cabin
roof because it impeded his movements — a perfectly
legitimate thing to do since the cabins of these vehicles
were not air-tight, the glass dome merely providing some
protection against infiltration and turbulence. While
Fechner was occupied with his colleague, his own oxygen
supply had probably been damaged and, no longer realiz-
ing what he was doing, he had pulled himself up on to the
superstructure, from which he had fallen into the ocean.

Fechner thus became the ocean’s first victim. Although
the atmosphere-suit was buoyant, they searched for his
body without success. It was, of course, possible that it
was still floating somewhere on the surface, but the expe-
dition was not equipped for a thorough search of this
immense, undulating desert, covered with patches of
dense fog.

By dusk, all but one of the search craft had returned to
base; only a big supply helicopter piloted by Andre Berton
was still missing. Just as they were about to raise the

alarm, the aircraft appeared. Berton was obviously suffer-
ing from nervous shock; after struggling out of his suit,
he ran round in circles like a madman. He had to be
overpowered, but went on shouting and sobbing. It was
rather surprising behavior to put it mildly, on the part of
a man who had been flying for seventeen years and was
well used to the hazards of cosmic navigation. The doc-
tors assumed that he too was suffering from the effects of
unfiltered gases.

Having more or less recovered his senses, Berton nev-
ertheless refused to leave the base, or even to go near the
window overlooking the ocean. Two days later, he asked
for permission to dictate a flight-report, stressing the im-
portance of what he was about to reveal. This report was
studied by the expeditionary council, who concluded that
it was the morbid creation of a mind under the influence
of poisonous gases from the atmosphere. As for the sup-
posed revelations, they were evidently regarded as part of
Berton’s clinical history rather than that of the expedition
itself, and they were not described.

So much for the supplement. It seemed to me that
Berton’s report must at any rate provide a key to the
mystery. What strange happening could have had such a
shattering effect on a veteran space-pilot? I began to
search through the books once more, but The Little Apocry-
pha was not to be found. I was growing more and more
exhausted and left the room, having decided to postpone
the search until the following day.

As I was passing the foot of the stairway, I noticed that
the aluminum treads were streaked with light falling from
above. Sartorius was still at work. I decided to go up and
see him.

It was hotter on the upper deck, but the paper strips still
fluttered frenziedly at the air vents. The corridor was wide
and low-ceilinged. The main laboratory was enclosed by
a thick panel of opaque glass in a chrome embrasure. A
dark curtain screened the door on the inside, and the light
was coming from windows let in above the lintel. I pressed
down the handle, but, as I expected, the door refused to
budge. The only sound from the laboratory was an inter-

mittent whine like that of a defective gas jet. I knocked. No
reply. I called:

“Sartorius! Dr. Sartorius! I’m the new man, Kelvin. I
must see you, it’s very important. Please let me in!”

There was a rustling of papers.

“It’s me, Kelvin. You must have heard of me. I arrived
off the Prometheus a few hours ago.”

I was shouting, my lips glued to the angle where the
door joined the metal frame.

“Dr. Sartorius, I’m alone. Please open the door!”

Not a word. Then the same rustling as before, followed
by the clink of metal instruments on a tray. Then. . . I
could scarcely believe my ears. . . there came a succession
of little short footsteps, like the rapid drumming of a pair
of tiny feet, or remarkably agile fingers tapping out the
rhythm of steps on the lid of an empty tin box.

I yelled:

“Dr. Sartorius, are you going to open this door, yes or
no?”

No answer. Nothing but the pattering, and, simultane-
ously, the sound of a man walking on tiptoe. But, if the
man was moving about, he could not at the same time be
tapping out an imitation of a child’s footsteps.

No longer able to control my growing fury, I burst out:

“Dr. Sartorius, I have not made a sixteen-month jour-
ney just to come here and play games! I’ll count up to ten.
If you don’t let me in, I shall break down the door!”

In fact, I was doubtful whether it would be easy to force
this particular door, and the discharge of a gas pistol is
not very powerful. Nevertheless, I was determined some-
how or other to carry out my threat, even if it meant
resorting to explosives, which I could probably find in the
munition store. I could not draw back now; I could not go
on playing an insane game with all the cards stacked
against me.

There was the sound of a struggle — or was it simply
objects being thrust aside? The curtain was pulled back,
and an elongated shadow was projected on to the glass.

A hoarse, high-pitched voice spoke:

“If I open the door, you must give me your word not
to come in.”

“In that case, why open it?”

“I’ll come out.”

“Very well, I promise.”

The silhouette vanished and the curtain was carefully
replaced.

Obscure noises came from inside the laboratory. I
heard a scraping — a table being dragged across the floor?
At last, the lock clicked back, and the glass panel opened
just enough to allow Sartorius to slip through into the
corridor.

He stood with his back against the door, very tall and
thin, all bones under his white sweater. He had a black
scarf knotted around his neck, and over his arm he was
carrying a laboratory smock, covered with chemical
burns. His head, which was unusually narrow, was cocked
to one side. I could not see his eyes: he wore curved dark
glasses, which covered up half his face. His lower jaw was
elongated; he had bluish lips and enormous, blue-tinged
ears. He was unshaven. Red anti-radiation gloves hung by
their laces from his wrists.

For a moment we looked at one another with undis-
guised aversion. His shaggy hair (he had obviously cut it
himself) was the color of lead, his beard grizzled. Like
Snow, his forehead was burnt, but the lower half only;
above, it was pallid. He must have worn some kind of cap
when exposed to the sun.

“Well, I’m listening,” he said.

I had the impression that he did not care what I had to
say to him.' Standing there, tense, still pressed against the
door panel, his attention was mainly directed to what was
going on behind him.

Disconcerted, I hardly knew how to begin.

“My name is Kelvin,” I said, “You must have heard
about me. I am, or rather I was, a colleague of Gibarian’s.”

His thin face, entirely composed of vertical planes, ex-
actly as I had always imagined Don Quixote’s, was quite
expressionless. This blank mask did not help me to find
the right words.

“I heard that Gibarian was dead ...” I broke off.

“Yes. Go on, I’m listening.” His voice betrayed his
impatience.

“Did he commit suicide? Who found the body, you or
Snow?”

“Why ask me? Didn’t Dr. Snow tell you what hap-
pened?”

“I wanted to hear your own account.”

“You’ve studied psychology, haven’t you, Dr. Kelvin?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“You think of yourself as a servant of science?”

“Yes, of course. What has that to do with. . .”

“You are not an officer of the law. At this hour of the
day, you should be at work, but instead of doing the job
you were sent here for, you not only threaten to force the
door of my laboratory, you question me as though I were
a criminal suspect.”

His forehead was dripping with sweat. I controlled my-
self with an effort. I was determined to get through to him.
I gritted my teeth and said:

“You are suspect, Dr. Sartorius. What is more, you’re
well aware of it!”

“Kelvin, unless you either retract or apologize, I shall
lodge a complaint against you.”

“Why should I apologize? You’re the one who bar-
ricaded himself in this laboratory instead of coming out
to meet me, instead of telling me the truth about what is
going on here. Have you gone completely mad? What are
you — a scientist, or a miserable coward?”

I don’t know what other insults I hurled at him. He did
not even flinch. Globules of sweat trickled down over the
enlarged pores of his cheeks. Suddenly I realized that he
had not heard a word I was saying. Both hands behind his
back, he was holding the door in position with all his
strength; it was rattling as though someone inside were
firing bursts from a machine-gun at the panel.

In a strange, high-pitched voice, he moaned:

“Go away. For God’s sake, leave me. Go downstairs, I’ll
join you later. I’ll do whatever you want, only please go
away now.”

His voice betrayed such exhaustion that instinctively I
put out my arms to help him control the door. At this, he
uttered a cry of horror, as though I had pointed a knife at

him. As I retreated, he was shouting in his falsetto voice:
“Go away! Go away! I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m com-
ing! No! No!” He opened the door and shot inside. I
thought I saw a shining yellow disc flash across his chest.

Now a muffled clamor rose from the laboratory; a huge
shadow appeared, as the curtain was brushed momen-
tarily aside; then it fell back into place and I could see
nothing more. What was happening inside that room? I
heard running footsteps, as though a mad chase were in
progress, followed by a terrifying crash of broken glass
and the sound of a child’s laugh.

My legs were trembling, and I stared at the door, ap-
palled. The din had subsided, giving way to an uneasy
silence. I sat down on a window ledge, too stunned to
move; my head was splitting.

From where I was, I could see only a part of the corridor
encircling the laboratory. I was at the summit of the Sta-
tion, beneath the actual shell of the superstructure; the
walls were concave and sloping, with oblong windows a
few yards apart. The blue day was ending, and, as the
shutters grated upwards, a blinding light shone through
the thick glass. Every metal fitting, every latch and joint,
blazed, and the great glass panel of the laboratory door
glittered with pale coruscations. My hands looked grey in
the spectral light. I noticed that I was holding the gas
pistol; I had not realized that I had taken it out of its
holster, and replaced it. What use could I have made of it
— or even of a gamma pistol, had I had one? I could hardly
have taken the laboratory by force.

I got up. The disc of the sun, reminiscent of a hydrogen
explosion, was sinking into the ocean, and as I descended
the stairway I was pierced by a jet of horizontal rays which
was almost tangible. Halfway downstairs I paused to
think, then went back up the steps and followed the corri-
dor round the laboratory. Soon, I came across a second
glass door, exactly like the first; I made no attempt to
open it, knowing that it would be locked.

I was looking for an opening or vent of some sort. The
idea of spying on Sartorius had come to me quite natu-
rally, without the least sense of shame. I was determined

to have done with conjecture and discover the truth, even
if, as I imagined it would, the truth proved incomprehen-
sible. It struck me that the laboratory must be lit from
above by windows let into the dome. It should be possible,
therefore, to spy on Sartorius from the outside. But first
I should have to equip myself with an atmosphere-suit and
oxygen gear.

When I reached the deck below, I found the door of the
radio-cabin ajar. Snow, sunk in his armchair, was asleep.
At the sound of my footsteps, he opened his eyes with a
start.

“Hello, Kelvin!” he croaked. “Well, did you discover
anything?”

“Yes. . . he’s not alone.”

Snow grinned sourly.

“Oh, really? Well, that’s something. Has he got
visitors?”

“I can’t understand why you won’t tell me what’s going
on,” I retorted impulsively. “ Since I have to remain here.
I’m bound to find out the truth sooner or later. Why the
mystery?”

“When you’ve received some visitors yourself, you’ll
understand.”

I had the impression that my presence annoyed him
and he had no desire to prolong the conversation.

I turned to go.

“Where are you off to?”

I did not answer.

The hangar-deck was just as I had left it. My burnt-out
capsule still stood there, gaping open, on its platform. On
my way to select an atmosphere-suit, I suddenly realized
that the skylights through which I hoped to observe Sar-
torius would probably be made of slabs of opaque glass,
and I lost interest in my venture on to the outer hull.

Instead, I descended the spiral stairway which led to the
lower-deck store rooms. The cramped passage at the bot-
tom contained the usual litter of crates and cylinders. The
walls were sheeted in bare metal which had a bluish glint.
A little further on, the frosted pipes of the refrigeration
plant appeared beneath a vault and I followed them to the

far end of the corridor where they vanished into a cooling-
jacket with a wide, plastic collar. The door to the cold
store was two inches thick and lagged with an insul-
ating compound. When I opened it, the icy cold
gripped me. I stood, shivering, on the threshold of a cave
carved out of an iceberg; the huge coils, like sculptured
reliefs, were hung with stalactites. Here, too, buried
beneath a covering of snow, there were crates and cylin-
ders, and shelves laden with boxes and transparent bags
containing a yellow, oily substance. The vault sloped
downwards to where a curtain of ice hid the back of the
cave. I broke through it. An elongated figure, covered
with a sheet of canvas, lay stretched out on an aluminum
rack.

I lifted a corner of the canvas and recognised the stiff
features of Gibarian. His glossy black hair clung tightly to
his skull. The sinews of his throat stood out like bones.
His glazed eyes stared up at the vault, a tear of opaque ice
hanging from the corner of each lid. The cold was so
intense that I had to clench my teeth to prevent them from
chattering. I touched Gibarian’s cheek; it was like touch-
ing a block of petrified wood, bristling with black prickly
hairs. The curve of the lips seemed to express an infinite,
disdainful patience.

As I let the canvas fall, I noticed, peeping out from
beneath the folds at the foot, five round, shiny objects, like
black pearls, ranged in order of size. I stiffened with hor-
ror.

What I had seen were the round pads of five bare toes.
Under the shroud, flattened against Gibarian’s body, lay
the Negress. Slowly, I pulled back the canvas. Her head,
covered in frizzy hair twisted up into little tufts, was rest-
ing in the hollow of one massive arm. Her back glistened,
the skin stretched taut over the spinal column. The huge
body gave no sign of life. I looked again at the soles of her
naked feet; they had not been flattened or deformed in any
way by the weight which they had had to carry. Walking
had not calloused the skin, which was as unblemished as
that of her shoulders.

With a far greater effort than it had taken to touch

Gibarian’s corpse, I forced myself to touch one of the bare
feet. Then I made a second bewildering discovery: this
body, abandoned in a deep freeze, this apparent corpse,
lived and moved. The woman had withdrawn her foot, like
a sleeping dog when you try to take its paw.

“She’ll freeze,” I thought confusedly, but her flesh had
been warm to the touch, and I even imagined I had felt the
regular beating of her pulse. I backed out and fled.

As I emerged from the white cave, the heat seemed
suffocating. I climbed the spiral stairway back to the han-
gar-deck.

I sat on the hoops of a rolled-up parachute and put my
head in my hands. I was stunned. My thoughts ran wild.
What was happening to me? If my reason was giving way,
the sooner I lost consciousness the better. The idea of
sudden extinction aroused an inexpressible, unrealistic
hope.

Useless to go and find Snow or Sartorius: no one could
fully understand what I had just experienced, what I had
seen, what I had touched with my own hands. There was
only one possible explanation, one possible conclusion:
madness. Yes, that was it, I had gone mad as soon as I
arrived here. Emanations from the ocean had attacked my
brain, and hallucination had followed hallucination.
Rather than exhaust myself trying to solve these illusory
riddles, I would do better to ask for medical assistance, to
radio the Prometheus or some other vessel, to send out an
SOS.

Then a curious change came over me: at the thought
that I had gone mad, I calmed down.

And yet. . . I had heard Snow’s words quite clearly. If,
that is, Snow existed and I had ever spoken to him. The
hallucinations might have begun much earlier. Perhaps I
was still on board the Prometheus; perhaps I had been
stricken with a sudden mental illness and was now con-
fronting the creations of my own inflamed brain. Assum-
ing that I was ill, there was reason to believe that I would
get better, which gave me some hope of deliverance — a
hope irreconcilable with a belief in the reality of the tan-
gled nightmares through which I had just lived.

If only I could think up some experiment in logic — a key
experiment — which would reveal whether I had really
gone mad and was a helpless prey to the figments of my
imagination, or whether, in spite of their ludicrous im-
probability, I had been experiencing real events.

As I turned all this over in my mind, I was looking at
the monorail which led to the launching pad. It was a steel
girder, painted pale green, a yard above the ground. Here
and there, the paint was chipped, worn by the friction of
the rocket trolleys. I touched the steel, feeling it grow
warm beneath my fingers, and rapped the metal plating
with my knuckles. Could madness attain such a degree of
reality? Yes, I answered myself. After all, it was my own
subject, I knew what I was talking about.

But was it possible to work out a controlled experi-
ment? At first I told myself that it was not, since my sick
brain (if it really was sick) would create the illusions I
demanded of it. Even while dreaming, when we are in
perfectly good health, we talk to strangers, put questions
to them and hear their replies. Moreover, although our
interlocutors are in fact the creations of our own psychic
activity, evolved by a pseudo-independent process, until
they have spoken to us we do not know what words will
emerge from their lips. And yet these words have been
formulated by a separate part of our own minds; we
should therefore be aware of them at the very moment
that we think them up in order to put them into the
mouths of imaginary beings. Consequently, whatever
form my proposed test were to take, and whatever method
I used to put it into execution, there was always the possi-
bility that I was behaving exactly as in a dream. Neither
Snow nor Sartorius having any real existence, it would be
pointless to put questions to them.

I thought of taking some powerful drug, peyotl for ex-
ample, or another preparation inducing vivid hallucina-
tions. If visions ensued, this would prove that I had really
experienced these recent events and that they were part
and parcel of the surrounding material reality. But then,
no, I thought, this would not constitute the proof I
needed, since I knew the effects of the drug (which I

should have chosen for myselQ and my imagination could
suggest to me the double illusion of having taken the drug
and of experiencing its effects.

I was going around in circles; there seemed to be no
escape. It was not possible to think except with one’s
brain, no one could stand outside himself in order to
check the functioning of his inner processes. Suddenly an
idea struck me, as simple as it was effective.

I leapt to my feet and ran to the radio cabin. The room
was deserted. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall.
Nearly four o’clock, the fourth hour of the Station’s artifi-
cial night-time. Outside, the red sun was shining. I quickly
plugged in the long-range transmitter, and while the
valves warmed up, I went over in my mind the principal
stages of the experiment.

I could not remember the call-sign for the automatic
station on the satellite, but I found it on a card hanging
above the main instrument panel, sent it out in Morse,
and received the answering signal eight seconds later.
The satellite, or rather its electronic brain, identified itself
by a rhythmic pulse.

I instructed the satellite to give me the figures for the
galactic meridians it was traversing at 22-second intervals
while orbiting Solaris, and I specified an answer to five
decimal points.

Then I sat and waited for the reply. Ten minutes later,
it arrived. I tore off the strip of freshly printed paper and
hid it in a drawer, taking care not to look at it. I went to
the bookcase and took out the big galactic charts, the
logarithm tables, a calendar giving the daily path of the
satellite, and various other textbooks. Then I sat down to
work out for myself the answer to the question I had
posed. For an hour or more, I integrated the equations.
It was a long time since I had tackled such elaborate calcu-
lations. My last major effort in this direction must have
been my practical astronomy exam.

I worked at the problem with the help of the Station’s
giant computer. My reasoning went as follows: by making
my calculations from the galactic charts, I would obtain an
approximate cross-check with the results provided by the

satellite. Approximate because the path of the satellite
was subject to very complex variations due to the effects
of the gravitational forces of Solaris and its two suns, as
well as to the local variations in gravity caused by the
ocean. When I had the two series of figures, one furnished
by the satellite and the other calculated theoretically on
the basis of the galactic charts, I would make the necessary
adjustments and the two groups would then coincide up
to the fourth decimal point, discrepancies due to the un-
foreseeable influence of the ocean arising only at the fifth.

If the figures obtained from the satellite were simply the
product of my deranged mind, they could not possibly
coincide with the second series. My brain might be un-
hinged, but it could not conceivably compete with the
Station’s giant computer and secretly perform calcula-
tions requiring several months’ work. Therefore if the
figures corresponded, it would follow that the Station’s
computer really existed, that I had really used it, and that
I was not delirious.

My hands trembled as I took the telegraphic tape out of
the drawer and laid it alongside the wide band of paper
from the computer. As I had predicted, the two series of
numbers corresponded up to the fourth decimal point.

I put all the papers away in the drawer. So the computer
existed independently of me; that meant that the Station
and its inhabitants really existed too.

As I was closing the drawer, I noticed that it was stuffed
with sheets of paper covered with hastily scribbled sums.
A single glance told me that someone had already at-
tempted an experiment similar to mine and had asked the
satellite, not for information about the galactic meridians,
but for the measurements of Solaris’s albedo at intervals
of forty seconds.

I was not mad. The last ray of hope was extinguished.
I unplugged the transmitter, drank the remains of the
soup in the vacuum flask, and went to bed.

R h ey a

Desperation and a sort of dumb rage had sustained me
while working with the computer. Now, overcome with
exhaustion, I could not even remember how to let down
a mechanical bed. Forgetting to push back the clamps, I
hung on to the handle with all my weight and the mattress
tumbled down on top of me.

I tore off my clothes and flung them away from me, then
collapsed on to the pillow, without even taking the trouble
to inflate it properly. I fell asleep with the lights on.

I reopened my eyes with the impression of having
dozed off for only a few minutes. The room was bathed in
a dim red light. It was cooler, and I felt refreshed.

I lay there, the bedclothes pushed back, completely
naked. The curtains were half drawn, and there, opposite
me, beside the window-pane lit by the red sun, someone
was sitting. It was Rheya. She was wearing a white beach
dress, the material stretched tightly over her breasts. She
sat with her legs crossed; her feet were bare. Motionless,
leaning on her sun-tanned arms, she gazed at me from
beneath her black lashes: Rheya, with her dark hair
brushed back. For a long time, I lay there peacefully gaz-
ing back at her. My first thought was reassuring: I was
dreaming and I was aware that I was dreaming. Neverthe-

less, I would have preferred her not to be there. I closed
my eyes and tried to shake off the dream. When I opened
them again, Rheya was still sitting opposite me. Her lips
were pouting slightly — a habit of hers — as though she
were about to whistle; but her expression was serious. I
thought of my recent speculations on the subject of
dreams.

She had not changed since the day I had seen her for
the last time; she was then a girl of nineteen. Today, she
would be twenty-nine. But, evidently, the dead do not
change; they remain eternally young. She went on gazing
at me, an expression of surprise on her face. I thought of
throwing something at her, but, even in a dream, I could
not bring myself to harm a dead person.

I murmured: “Poor little thing, have you come to visit
me?”

The sound of my voice frightened me; the room, Rheya,
everything seemed extraordinarily real. A three-dimen-
sional dream, colored in half-tones. ... I saw several
objects on the floor which I had not noticed when I went
to bed. When I wake up, I told myself, I shall check
whether these things are still there or whether, like Rheya,
I only saw them in a dream.

“Do you mean to stay for long?” I asked. I realized that
I was speaking very softly, like someone afraid of being
overheard. Why worry about eavesdroppers in a dream?

The sun was rising over the horizon. A good sign. I had
gone to bed during a red day, which should have been
succeeded by a blue day, followed by another red day. I
had not slept for fifteen hours at a stretch. So it was a
dream!

Reassured, I looked closely at Rheya. She was silhouet-
ted against the sun. The scarlet rays cast a glow over the
smooth skin of her left cheek and the shadows of her
eyelashes fell across her face. How pretty she was! Even
in my sleep my memory of her was uncannily precise. I
watched the movements of the sun, waiting to see the
dimple appear in that unusual place slightly below the
corner of the lips. All the same, I would have preferred to

wake up. It was time I did some work. I closed my eyelids
tightly.

I heard a metallic noise, and opened my eyes again.
Rheya was sitting beside me on the bed, still looking at me
gravely. I smiled at her. She smiled back at me and leant
forward. We kissed. First a timid, childish kiss, then more
prolonged ones. I held her for a long time. Was it possible
to feel so much in a dream, I wondered. I was not betray-
ing her memory, for it was of her that I was dreaming,
only her. It had never happened to me before. . . .

Was it then that I began to have doubts? I went on
telling myself that it was a dream, but my heart tightened.

I tensed my muscles, ready to leap out of bed. I was
half-expecting to fail, for often, in dreams, your sluggish
body refuses to respond. I hoped that the effort would
drag me out of sleep. But I did not wake; I sat on the edge
of the bed, my legs dangling. There was nothing for it, I
should have to endure this dream right to the bitter end.
My feeling of well-being had vanished. I was afraid.

“What ...” I asked. I cleared my throat. “What do you
want?”

I felt around the floor with my bare feet, searching for
a pair of slippers. I stubbed my toe against a sharp edge,
and stifled a cry of pain. That’ll wake me up, I thought with
satisfaction, at the same time remembering that I had no
slippers.

But still it went on. Rheya had drawn back and was
leaning against the end of the bed. Her dress rose and fell
lightly with her breathing. She watched me with quiet
interest.

Quick, I thought, a shower! But then I realized that in
a dream a shower would not interrupt my sleep.

“Where have you come from?”

She seized my hand and, with a gesture I knew well,
threw it up and caught it again, then played with my
fingers.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Are you angry?”

It was her voice, that familiar, low-pitched, slightly far-
away voice, and that air of not caring much about what she

was saying, of already being preoccupied with something
else. People used to think her off-hand, even rude, be-
cause the expression on her face rarely changed from one
of vague astonishment.

“Did . . . did anyone see you?”

“I don’t know. I got here without any trouble. Why,
Kris, is it important?"

She was still playing with my fingers, but her face now
wore a slight frown.

“Rheya.”

“What, my darling?”

“How did you know where I was?”

She pondered. A broad smile revealed her teeth.

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Isn’t it funny? When I came
in you were asleep. I didn’t wake you up because you get
cross so easily. You have a very bad temper.”

She squeezed my hand.

“Did you go down below?”

“Yes. It was all frozen. I ran away.”

She let go of my hand and lay back. With her hair falling
to one side, she looked at me with the half-smile that had
irritated me before it had captivated me.

“But, Rheya ...” I stammered.

I leaned over her and turned back the short sleeve of
her dress. There, just above her vaccination scar, was a
red dot, the mark of a hypodermic needle. I was not really
surprised, but my heart gave a lurch.

I touched the red spot with my finger. For years now I
had dreamt of it, over and over again, always waking with
a shudder to find myself in the same position, doubled up
between the crumpled sheets— just as I had found her,
already growing cold. It was as though, in my sleep, I tried
to relive what she had gone through; as though I hoped
to turn back the clock and ask her forgiveness, or keep her
company during those final minutes when she was feeling
the effects of the injection and was overcome by terror.
She, who dreaded the least scratch, who hated pain or the
sight of blood, had deliberately done this horrible thing,
leaving nothing but a few scribbled words addressed to

me. I had kept her note in my wallet. By now it was soiled
and creased, but I had never had the heart to throw it
away.

Time and time again I had imagined her tracing those
words and making her final preparations. I persuaded
myself that she had only been play-acting, that she had
wanted to frighten me and had taken an overdose by mis-
take. Everyone told me that it must have happened like
that, or else it had been a spontaneous decision, the result
of a sudden depression. But people knew nothing of what
I had said to her five days earlier; they did not know that,
in order to twist the knife more cruelly, I had taken away
my belongings and that she, as I was closing my suitcases,
had said, very calmly: “I suppose you know what this
means? And I had pretended not to understand, even
though I knew quite well what she meant; I thought her
too much of a coward, and had even told her as much. .
. . And now she was lying across the bed, looking at me
attentively, as though she did not know that it was I who
had killed her.

“Well?” she asked. Her eyes reflected the red sun. The
entire room was red. Rheya looked at her arm with inter-
est, because I had been examining it for so long, and when
I drew back she laid her smooth, cool cheek in the palm
of my hand.

“Rheya,” I stammered, “it’s not possible. . .”

“Hush!”

I could sense the movement of her eyes beneath their
closed lids.

“Where are we, Rheya?”

“At home.”

“Where’s that?”

One eye opened and shut again instantly. The long
lashes tickled my palm.

“Kris.”

“What?”

“I’m happy.”

Raising my head, I could see part of the bed in the
washbasin mirror: a cascade of soft hair— Rheya’s hair—
and my bare knees. I pulled towards me with my foot one

of the misshapen objects I had found in the box and
picked it up with my free hand. It was a spindle, one end
of which had melted to a needle-point. I held the point to
my skin and dug it in, just beside a small pink scar. The
pain shot through my whole body. I watched the blood run
down the inside of my thigh and drip noiselessly on to the
floor.

What was the use? Terrifying thoughts assailed me,
thoughts which were taking a definite shape. I no longer
told myself: “It’s a dream.” I had ceased to believe that.
Now I was thinking: “I must be ready to defend myself.”

I examined her shoulders, her hip under the close-
fitting white dress, and her dangling naked feet. Leaning
forward, I took hold of one of her ankles and ran my
fingers over the sole of her foot.

The skin was soft, like that of a newborn child.

I knew then that it was not Rheya, and I was almost
certain that she herself did not know it.

The bare foot wriggled and Rheya’s lips parted in silent
laughter.

“Stop it,” she murmured.

Cautiously I withdrew my hand from under the cheek
and stood up. Then I dressed quickly. She sat up and
watched me.

“Where are your things?” I asked her. Immediately, I
regretted my question.

“My things?”

“Don’t you have anything except that dress?”

From now on, I would pursue the game with my eyes
open. I tried to appear unconcerned, indifferent, as
though we had parted only yesterday, as though we had
never parted.

She stood up. With a familiar gesture, she tugged at her
skirt to smooth out the creases. My words had worried
her, but she said nothing. For the first time, she examined
the room with an enquiring, scrutinizing gaze. Then, puz-
zled, she replied:

“I don’t know.” She opened the locker door. “In here,
perhaps?”

“No, there’s nothing but work-suits in there.”

I found an electric point by the basin and began to
shave, careful not to take my eyes off her.

She went to and fro, rummaging everywhere. Eventu-
ally, she came up to me and said:

“Kris, I have the feeling that something’s happen-

She broke off. I unplugged the razor, and waited.

“I have the feeling that I’ve forgotten something,” she
went on, “that I’ve forgotten a lot of things. I can only
remember you. I ... I can’t remember anything else.”

I listened to her, forcing myself to look unconcerned.

“Have I . . . Have I been ill?” she asked.

“Yes ... in a way. Yes, you’ve been slightly ill.”

“There you are then. That explains my lapses of mem-
ory.”

She had brightened up again. Never shall I be able to
describe how I felt then. As I watched her moving about
the room, now smiling, now serious, talkative one mo-
ment, silent the next, sitting down and then getting up
again, my terror was gradually overcome by the convic-
tion that it was the real Rheya there in the room with me,
even though my reason told me that she seemed somehow
stylized, reduced to certain characteristic expressions,
gestures and movements.

Suddenly, she clung to me.

“What’s happening to us, Kris?” She pressed her fists
against my chest. “Is everything all right? Is there some-
thing wrong?”

“Things couldn’t be better.”

She smiled wanly.

“When you answer me like that, it means things could
hardly be worse.”

“What nonsense!” I said hurriedly. “Rheya, my darling,
I must leave you. Wait here for me.” And, because I was
becoming extremely hungry, I added: “Would you like
something to eat?”

“To eat?” She shook her head. “No. Will I have to wait
long for you?”

“Only an hour.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“You can’t come with me. I’ve got work to do.”

“I’m coming with you.”

She had changed. This was not Rheya at all; the real
Rheya never imposed herself, would never have forced
her presence on me.

“It’s impossible, my sweet.”

She looked me up and down. Then suddenly she seized
my hand. And my hand lingered, moved up her warm,
rounded arm. In spite of myself I was caressing her. My
body recognized her body; my body desired her, my body
was attracted towards hers beyond reason, beyond
thought, beyond fear.

Desperately trying to remain calm, I repeated:

“Rheya, it’s out of the question. You must stay here.”

A single word echoed round the room:

“No.”

“Why?”

“I ... I don’t know.” She looked around her, then, once
more, raised her eyes to mine. “I can’t,” she whispered.

“But why?”

“I don’t know. I can’t. It’s as though ... as though. . .”
She searched for the answer which, as she uttered it,
seemed to come to her like a revelation. “It’s as though
I mustn’t let you out of my sight.”

The resolute tone of her voice scarcely suggested an
avowal of affection; it implied something quite different.
With this realization, the manner in which I was embrac-
ing Rheya underwent an abrupt, though not immediately
noticeable, change.

I was holding her in my arms and gazing into her eyes.

Imperceptibly, almost instinctively, I began to pull her
hands together behind her back at the same time search-
ing the room with my eyes: I needed something with
which to tie her hands.

Suddenly she jerked her elbows together, and there
followed a powerful recoil. I resisted for barely a second.
Thrown backwards and almost lifted off my feet, even had
I been an athlete I could not have freed myself. Rheya
straightened up and dropped her arms to her sides. Her
face, lit by an uncertain smile, had played no part in the
struggle.

She was gazing at me with the same calm interest as

when I had first awakened — as though she was utterly un-
moved by my desperate ploy, as though she was quite
unaware that anything had happened, and had not noticed
my sudden panic. She stood before me, waiting — grave,
passive, mildly surprised.

Leaving Rheya in the middle of the room, I went over
to the washbasin. I was a prisoner, caught in an absurd
trap from which at all costs I was determined to escape.
I would have been incapable of putting into words the
meaning of what had happened or what was going
through my mind; but now I realized that my situation was
identical with that of the other inhabitants of the Station,
that everything I had experienced, discovered or guessed
at was part of a single whole, terrifying and incomprehen-
sible. Meanwhile, I was racking my brain to think up some
ruse, to work out some means of escape. Without turning
round, I could feel Rheya’s eyes following me. There was
a medicine chest above the basin. Quickly I went through
its contents, and found a bottle of sleeping pills. I shook
out four tablets — the maximum dose — into a glass, and
filled it with hot water. I made little effort to conceal my
actions from Rheya. Why? I did not even bother to ask
myself.

When the tablets had dissolved, I returned to Rheya,
who was still standing in the same place.

“Are you angry with me?” she asked, in a low voice.

“No. Drink this.”

Unconsciously, I had known all along that she would
obey me. She took the glass without a word and drank the
scalding mixture in one gulp. Putting down the empty
glass on a stool, I went and sat in a chair in the corner of
the room.

Rheya joined me, squatting on the floor in her accus-
tomed manner with her legs folded under her, and toss-
ing back her hair. I was no longer under any illusion: this
was not Rheya — and yet I recognized her every habitual
gesture. Horror gripped me by the throat; and what was
most horrible was that I must go on tricking her, pretend-
ing to take her for Rheya, while she herself sincerely be-
lieved that she was Rheya — of that I was certain, if one

could be certain of anything any longer.

She was leaning against my knees, her hair brushing my
hand. We remained thus for some while. From time to
time, I glanced at my watch. Half-an-hour went by; the
sleeping tablets should have started to work. Rheya mur-
mured something:

“What did you say?”

There was no reply.

Although I attributed her silence to the onset of sleep,
secretly I doubted the effectiveness of the pills. Once
again, I did not ask myself why. Perhaps it was because my
subterfuge seemed too simple.

Slowly her head slid across my knees, her dark hair
falling over her face. Her breathing grew deeper and
more regular; she was asleep. I stooped in order to lift her
on to the bed. As I did so, her eyes opened; she put her
arms round my neck and burst into shrill laughter.

I was dumbfounded. Rheya could hardly contain her
mirth. With an expression that was at once ingenuous and
sly, she observed me through half-closed eyelids. I sat
down again, tense, stupefied, at a loss. With a final burst
of laughter, she snuggled against my legs.

In an expressionless voice, I asked:

“Why are you laughing?”

Once again, a look of anxiety and surprise came over
her face. It was clear that she wanted to give me an honest
explanation. She sighed, and rubbed her nose like a child.

“I don’t know,” she said at last, with genuine puzzle-
ment. “I’m behaving like an idiot, aren’t I? But so are you
. . . you look idiotic, all stiff and pompous like . . . like
Pelvis.”

I could hardly believe my ears.

“Like who?”

“Like Pelvis. You know who I mean, that fat man. . . .”

Rheya could not possibly have known Pelvis, or even
heard me mention him, for the simple reason that he had
returned from an expedition three years after her death.
I had not known him previously and was therefore una-
ware of his inveterate habit, when presiding over meet-
ings at the Institute, of letting sessions drag on

indefinitely. Moreover, his name was Pelle Villis and until
his return I did not know that he had been nicknamed
Pelvis.

Rheya leaned her elbows on my knees and looked me
in the eyes. I put out my hand and stroked her arms, her
shoulders and the base of her bare neck, which pulsed
beneath my fingers. While it looked as though I was ca-
ressing her (and indeed, judging by her expression, that
was how she interpreted the touch of my hands) in reality
I was verifying once again that her body was warm to the
touch, an ordinary human body, with muscles, bones,
joints. Gazing calmly into her eyes, I felt a hideous desire
to tighten my grip.

Suddenly I remembered Snow’s bloodstained hands,
and let go.

“How you stare at me,” Rheya said, placidly.

My heart was beating so furiously that I was incapable
of speech. I closed my eyes. In that very instant, complete
in every detail, a plan of action sprang to my mind. There
was not a second to lose. I stood up.

“I must go out, Rheya. If you absolutely insist on com-
ing with me. I’ll take you.”

“Good.”

She jumped to her feet.

I opened the locker and selected a suit for each of us.
Then I asked:

“Why are you bare-foot?”

She answered hesitantly:

“I don’t know ... I must have left my shoes some-
where.”

I did not pursue the matter.

“You’ll have to take your dress off to put this on.”

“Flying-overalls? What for?”

As she tried to take off her dress, an extraordinary fact
became apparent: there were no zips, or fastenings of any
sort; the red buttons down the front were merely decora-
tive. Rheya smiled, embarrassed.

As though it were the most normal way of going about
it, I picked up some kind of scalpel from the floor and slit
the dress down the back from neck to waist, so that she
could pull it over her head.

When she had put on the flying-overalls (which were
slightly too large for her) and we were about to leave, she
asked:

“Are we going on a flight?”

I merely nodded. I was afraid of running into Snow. But
the dome was empty and the door leading to the radio
cabin was shut.

A deathly silence still hung over the hangar-deck. Rheya
followed my movements attentively. I opened a stall and
examined the shuttle vehicle inside. I checked, one after
another, the micro-reactor, the controls, and the diffus-
ers. Then, having removed the empty capsule from its
stand, I aimed the electric trolley towards the sloping
runway.

I had chosen a small shuttle used for ferrying stores
between the Station and the satellite, one that did not
normally carry personnel since it did not open from the
inside. The choice was carefully calculated in accordance
with my plan. Of course, I had no intention of launching
it, but I simulated the preparations for an actual depar-
ture. Rheya, who had so often accompanied me on my
space-flights, was familiar with the preliminary routine.
Inside the cockpit, I checked that the climatization and
oxygen-supply systems were functioning. I switched in
the main circuit and the indicators on the instrument
panel lit up. I climbed out and said to Rheya, who was
waiting at the foot of the ladder:

“Get in.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll follow you. I have to close the hatch behind us.”

She gave no sign that she suspected any trickery. When
she had disappeared inside, I stuck my head into the
opening and asked:

“Are you comfortable?”

I heard a muffled “yes” from inside the confined cock-
pit. I withdrew my head and slammed the hatch to with all
my strength. I slid home the two bolts and tightened the
five safety screws with the special spanner I had brought
with me. The slender metal cigar stood there, pointing
upwards, as though it were really about to take off into
space.

Its captive was in no danger: the oxygen-tanks were full
and there were food supplies in the cockpit. In any case,
I did not intend to keep her prisoner indefinitely. I des-
perately needed two hours of freedom in order to concen-
trate on the decisions which had to be taken and to work
out a joint plan of action with Snow.

As I was tightening the last screw but one, I felt a vibra-
tion in the three-pronged clamp which held the base of the
shuttle. I thought I must have loosened the support in my
over-eager handling of the heavy spanner, but when I
stepped back to take a look, I was greeted by a spectacle
which I hope I shall never have to see again.

The whole vehicle trembled, shaken from the inside as
though by some superhuman force. Not even a steel robot
could have imparted such a convulsive tremor to an 8-ton
mass, and yet the cabin contained only a frail, dark-haired
girl.

The reflections from the lights quivered on the shuttle’s
gleaming sides. I could not hear the blows; there was no
sound whatever from inside the vehicle. But the outspread
struts vibrated like taut wires. The violence of the shock-
waves was such that I was afraid the entire scaffolding
would collapse.

I tightened the final screw with a trembling hand, threw
down the spanner and jumped off the ladder. As I slowly
retreated, I noticed that the shock-absorbers, designed to
resist a continuous pressure, were vibrating furiously. It
looked to me as though the shuttle’s outer skin was wrin-
kling.

Frenziedly, I rushed to the control panel and with both
hands lifted the starting lever. As I did so the intercom
connected to the shuttle’s interior gave out a piercing
sound— not a cry, but a sound which bore not the slightest
resemblance to the human voice, in which I could never-
theless just make out my name, repeated over and over
again: “Kris! Kris! Kris!”

I had attacked the controls so violently, fumbling in my
haste, that my fingers were torn and bleeding.

A bluish glimmer, like that of a ghostly dawn, lit up the
walls. Swirling clouds of vaporous dust eddied round the

launching pad; the dust turned into a column of fierce
sparks and the echoes of a thunderous roar drowned all
other noise. Three flames, merging instantly into a single
pillar of fire, lifted the craft, which rose up through the
open hatch in the dome, leaving behind a glowing trail
which rippled as it gradually subsided. Shutters slid over
the hatch, and the automatic ventilators began to suck in
the acrid smoke which billowed round the room.

It was only later that I remembered all these details; at
the time, I hardly knew what I was seeing. Clinging to the
control-panel, the fierce heat burning my face and singe-
ing my hair, I gulped the acrid air which smelt of a mixture
of burning fuel and the ozone given off by ionization. I
had instinctively closed my eyes at the moment of lift-off,
but the glare had penetrated my eyelids. For some time,
I saw nothing but black, red and gold spirals which slowly
died away. The ventilators continued to hum; the smoke
and the dust were gradually clearing.

The green glow of the radar-screen caught my eye. My
hands flew across its controls as I began to search for the
shuttle. By the time I had located it, it was already flying
above the atmosphere. I had never launched a vehicle in
such a blind and unthinking way, with no pre-set speed or
direction. I did not even know its range and was afraid of
causing some unpredictable disaster. I judged that the
easiest thing to do would be to place it in a stationary orbit
around Solaris and then cut the engines. I verified from
the tables that the required altitude was 725 miles. It was
no guarantee, of course, but I could see no other way out.

I did not have the heart to switch on the intercom, which
had been disconnected at lift-off. I could not bear to ex-
pose myself again to the sound of that horrifying voice,
which was no longer even remotely human.

I felt I was justified in thinking that I had defeated the
‘simulacra,’ and that behind the illusion, contrary to all
expectation, I had found the real Rheya again — the Rheya
of my memories, whom the hypothesis of madness would
have destroyed.

At one o’clock, I left the hangar-deck.

“The Little Apocrypha”

My face and hands were badly burnt. I remembered notic-
ing a jar of anti-burn ointment when I was looking for
sleeping pills for Rheya (I was in no mood to laugh at my
naivete), so I went back to my room.

I opened the door. The room was glowing in the red
twilight. Someone was sitting in the armchair where
Rheya had knelt. For a second or two, I was paralysed with
terror, filled with an overwhelming desire to turn and run.
Then the seated figure raised its head: it was Snow. His
legs crossed, still wearing the acid-stained trousers, he
was looking through some papers, a pile of which lay on
a small table beside him. He put down those he was hold-
ing in his hand, let his glasses slide down his nose, and
scowled up at me.

Without saying a word, I went to the basin, took the
ointment out of the medicine chest and applied it to my
forehead and cheeks. Fortunately my face was not too
swollen and my eyes, which I had closed instinctively, did
not seem to be inflamed. I lanced some large blisters on
my temples and cheekbones with a sterilized needle; they
exuded a serous liquid, which I mopped up with an an-
tiseptic pad. Then I applied some gauze dressing.

Snow watched me throughout these first-aid opera-
tions, but I paid no attention to him. When at last I had

finished ( and my burns had become even more painful),
I sat myself down in the other chair. I had first to remove
Rheya’s dress — that apparently quite normal dress which
was nevertheless devoid of fastenings.

Snow, his hands clasped around one bony knee, con-
tinued to observe me with a critical air.

“Well, are you ready to have a chat?” he asked.

I did not answer; I was busy replacing a piece of gauze
which had slipped down one cheek.

“You’ve had a visitor, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered curtly.

He had begun the conversation on a note which I found
displeasing.

“And you’ve rid yourself of it already? Well, well! That
was quick!”

He touched his forehead, which was still peeling and
mottled with pink patches of new skin. I was thunder-
struck. Why had I not realized before the implications of
Snow’s and Sartorius’s ‘sunburn’? No one exposed him-
self to the sun here.

Without noticing my sudden change of expression he
went on:

“I imagine you didn’t try extreme methods straight
away. What did you use first— drugs, poison, judo?”

“Do you want to discuss the thing seriously or play the
fool ? If you don’t want to help, you can leave me in peace.”

He half-closed his eyes.

“Sometimes one plays the fool in spite of oneself. Did
you try the rope, or the hammer? Or the well-aimed ink-
bottle, like Luther? No?” He grimaced. “Aren’t you a fast
worker! The basin is still intact, you haven’t banged your
head against the walls, you haven’t even turned the room
upside down. One, two and into the rocket, just like that!”
He looked at his watch. “Consequently, we have two or
three hours at our disposal. . . . Am I getting on your
nerves?” he added, with a disagreeable smile.

“Yes,” I said curtly.

“Really? Well, if I tell you a little story, will you believe
me?”

I said nothing.

Still with that hideous smile, he went on:

“It started with Gibarian. He locked himself in his cabin
and refused to talk to us except through the door. And can
you guess what we thought?”

I remained silent.

“Naturally, we thought he had gone mad. He let a bit
of it out — through the locked door — but not everything.
You may wonder why he didn’t tell us that there was some-
one with him. Oh, suum cuiqw! But he was a true scientist.
He begged us to let him take his chance!”

“What chance?”

“He was obviously doing his damnedest to solve the
problem, to get to the bottom of it. He worked day and
night. You know what he was doing? You must know.”

“Those calculations, in the drawer of the radio cabin —
were they his?”

“Yes.”

“How long did it go on?”

“This visit? About a week . . . We thought he was suffer-
ing from hallucinations, or having a nervous breakdown.
I gave him some scopolamine.”

“Gave him?”

“Yes. He took it, but not for himself. He tried it out on
someone else.”

“What did you do?”

“On the third day we had decided, if all else failed, to
break down the door, maybe injuring his self-esteem, but
at least curing him.”

“Ah . . .”

“Yes.”

“So, in that locker. . . .”

“Yes, my friend, quite. But in the meantime, we too had
received visitors. We had our hands full, and didn’t have
a chance to tell him what was going on. Now it’s . . . it’s
become a routine.”

He spoke so softly that I guessed rather than heard the
last few words.

“I still don’t understand!” I exclaimed. “If you listened
at his door, you must have heard two voices.”

“No, we heard only his voice. There were strange

noises, but we thought they came from him too.”

“Only his voice! But how is it that you didn’t hear . . .
her?”

“I don’t know. I have the rudiments of a theory about
it, but I’ve dropped it for the moment. No point getting
bogged down in details. But what about you? You must
already have seen something yesterday, otherwise you
would have taken us for lunatics.”

“I thought it was I who had gone mad.”

“So you didn’t see anyone?”

“I saw someone.”

“Who?”

I gave him a long look — he no longer wore even the
semblance of a smile — and answered:

“That . . . that black woman . . .” He was leaning for-
ward, and as I spoke his body almost imperceptibly
relaxed. “You might have warned me.”

“I did warn you.”

“You could have chosen a better way!”

“It was the only way possible. I didn’t know what you
would see. No one could know, no one ever knows . .

“Listen, Snow, I want to ask you something. You’ve had
some experience of this . . . phenomenon. Will she . . . will
the person who visited me today . . . ?”

“Will she come back, do you mean?”

I nodded.

“Yes and no,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“She . . . this person will come back as though nothing
had happened, just as she was at the beginning of her first
visit. More precisely, she will appear not to realize what
you did to get rid of her. If you abide by the rules, she
won’t be aggressive.”

“What rules?”

“That depends on the circumstances.”

“Snow!”

“What?”

“Don’t let’s waste time talking in riddles.”

“In riddles? Kelvin, I’m afraid you still don’t under-
stand.” His eyes glittered. “All right, then!” he went on,

brutally. “Can you tell me who your visitor was?”

I swallowed my saliva and turned away. I did not want
to look at him. I would have preferred to be dealing with
anyone else but him; but I had no choice. A piece of gauze
came unstuck and fell on my hand. I gave a start.

“A woman who ...” I stopped. “She died. An injec-
tion . . .”

“Suicide?”

“Yes.”

“Is that all?”

He waited. Seeing that I remained silent, he murmured:

“No, it’s not all . . .”

I looked up quickly; he was not looking at me.

“How did you guess?” He said nothing. “It’s true,
there’s more to it than that.” I moistened my lips. “We
quarrelled. Or rather, I lost my temper and said a lot of
things I didn’t mean. I packed my bags and cleared out.
She had given me to understand . . . not in so many words
— when one’s lived together for years it’s not necessary.
I was certain she didn’t mean it, that she wouldn’t dare,
she’d be too afraid, and I told her so. Next day, I remem-
bered I’d left these . . . these ampoules in a drawer. She
knew they were there. I’d brought them back from the
laboratory because I needed them, and I had explained to
her that the effect of a heavy dose would be lethal. I was
a bit worried. I wanted to go back and get them, but I
thought that would give the impression that I’d taken her
remarks seriously. By the third day I was really worried
and made up my mind to go back. When I arrived, she was
dead.”

“You poor innocent!”

I looked up with a start. But Snow was not making fun
of me. It seemed to me that I was seeing him now for the
first time. His face was grey, and the deep lines between
cheek and nose were evidence of an unutterable exhaus-
tion: he looked a sick man.

Curiously awed, I asked him:

“Why did you say that?”

“Because it’s a tragic story.” Seeing that I was upset, he
added, hastily: “No, no, you still don’t understand. Of

course it’s a terrible burden to carry around, and you
must feel like a murderer, but . . . there are worse thines.”

‘‘Oh, really?” 6

‘‘Yes, really. And I’m almost glad that you refuse to
believe me. Certain events, which have actually happened,
are horrible, but what is more horrible still is what hasn’t
happened, what has never existed.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, my voice faltering.

He shook his head from side to side.

“A normal man,” he said. “What is a normal man? A
man who has never committed a disgraceful act? Maybe,
but has he never had uncontrollable thoughts? Perhaps he
hasn’t. But perhaps something, a phantasm, rose up from
somewhere within him, ten or thirty years ago, something
which he suppressed and then forgot about, which he
doesn’t fear since he knows he will never allow it to de-
velop and so lead to any action on his part. And now,
suddenly, in broad daylight, he comes across this thing
. . . this thought, embodied, riveted to him, indestructible.
He wonders where he is ... Do you know where he is?”

“Where?”

“Here,” whispered Snow, “on Solaris.”

“But what does it mean? After all, you and Sartorius
aren’t criminals. . . .”

“And you call yourself a psychologist, Kelvin! Who
hasn t had, at some moment in his life, a crazy daydream,
an obsession? Imagine . . . imagine a fetishist who
becomes infatuated with, let’s say, a grubby piece of cloth,
and who threatens and entreats and defies every risk in
order to acquire this beloved bit of rag. A peculiar idea,
isn’t it? A man who at one and the same time is ashamed
of the object of his desire and cherishes it above every-
thing else, a man who is ready to sacrifice his life for his
love, since the feeling he has for it is perhaps as over-
whelming as Romeo’s feeling for Juliet. Such cases exist,
as you know. So, in the same way, there are things, situa-
tions, that no one has dared to externalize, but which the
mind has produced by accident in a moment of aberra-
tion, of madness, call it what you will. At the next stage,
the idea becomes flesh and blood. That’s all.”

Stupefied, my mouth dry, I repeated:

“That’s all?” My head was spinning. “And what about
the Station? What has it got to do with the Station?”

“It’s almost as if you’re purposely refusing to under-
stand,” he groaned. “I’ve been talking about Solaris the
whole time, solely about Solaris. If the truth is hard to
swallow, it’s not my fault. Anyhow, after what you’ve al-
ready been through, you ought to be able to hear me out!
We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for soli-
tude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty for-
bids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty
well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely,
our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don’t want
to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the
boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us,
such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as
frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Ama-
zon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don’t
want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath
them our values and take over their heritage in exchange.
We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact.
This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no
need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don’t know
what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own,
suffices us; but we can’t accept it for what it is. We are
searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in
quest of a planet, of a civilization superior to our own but
developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval
past. At the same time, there is something inside us which
we don’t like to face up to, from which we try to protect
ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don’t
leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here
as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that
reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we
would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don’t like
it any more.”

I had listened to him patiently.

“But what on earth are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what we all wanted: contact with an-
other civilization. Now we’ve got it! And we can observe.

through a microscope, as it were, our own monstrous
ugliness, our folly, our shame!” His voice shook with
rage.

“So . . . you think it’s . . . the ocean? That the ocean is
responsible for it all? But why? I’m not asking how, I’m
simply asking why? Do you seriously think that it wants to
toy with us, or punish us — a sort of elementary demono-
mania? A planet dominated by a huge devil, who satisfies
the demands of his Satanic humour by sending succubi to
haunt the members of a scientific expedition. . . ? Snow,
you can’t believe anything so absurd!”

He muttered under his breath.

“This devil isn’t such a fool as all that . . .”

I looked at him in amazement. Perhaps what had hap-
pened, assuming that we had experienced it in our right
minds, had finally driven him over the edge? A reaction
psychosis?

He was laughing to himself.

“Making your diagnosis? Don’t be in too much of a
hurry! You’ve only been through one ordeal — and that a
reasonably mild one.”

“Oh, so the devil had pity on me!”

I was beginning to weary of this conversation.

“What is it you want exactly?” Snow went on. “Do you
want me to tell you what this mass of metamorphic plasma
x-billion tons of metamorphic plasma — is scheming
against us? Perhaps nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

Snow smiled.

“You must know that science is concerned with
phenomena rather than causes. The phenomena here be-
gan to manifest themselves eight or nine days after that
X-ray experiment. Perhaps the ocean reacted to the ir-
radiation with a counter-irradiation, perhaps it probed
our brains and penetrated to some kind of psychic tu-
mor.”

I pricked up my ears.

“Tumor?”

“Yes, isolated psychic processes, enclosed, stifled, en-
cysted — foci smouldering under the ashes of memory. It

deciphered them and made use of them, in the same way
as one uses a recipe or a blue-print. You know how alike
the asymmetric crystalline structures of a chromosome
are to those of the DNA molecule, one of the constituents
of the cerebrosides which constitute the substratum of the
memory-processes? This genetic substance is a plasma
which ‘remembers.’ The ocean has ‘read’ us by this
means, registering the minutest details, with the result
that . . . well, you know the result. But for what purpose?
Bah! At any rate, not for the purpose of destroying us. It
could have annihilated us much more easily. As far as one
can tell, given its technological resources, it could have
done anything it wished — confronted me with your dou-
ble, and you with mine, for example.”

“So that’s why you were so alarmed when I arrived, the
first evening!”

“Yes. In fact, how do you know it hasn’t done so? How
do you know I’m really the same old Ratface who landed
here two years ago?”

He went on laughing silently, enjoying my discomfi-
ture, then he growled:

“No, no, that’s enough of that! We’re two happy mor-
tals; I could kill you, you could kill me.”

“And the others, can’t they be killed?”

“I don’t advise you to try — a horrible sight!”

“Is there no means of killing them?”

“I don’t know. Certainly not with poison, or a weapon,
or by injection . . .”

“What about a gamma pistol?”

“Would you risk it?”

“Since we know they’re not human . .

“In a certain subjective sense, they are human. They
know nothing whatsoever about their origins. You must
have noticed that?”

“Yes. But then, how do you explain. . . ?”

“They . . . the whole thing is regenerated with extraor-
dinary rapidity, at an incredible speed — in the twinkling of
an eye. Then they start behaving again as . . .”

“As?”

“As we remember them, as they are engraved on our
memories, following which . . .”

“Did Gibarian know?” I interrupted.

“As much as we do, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Very probably.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“No. I found a book in his room . .

I leapt to my feet.

“The Little Apocrypha!”

“Yes.” He looked at me suspiciously. “Who could have
told you about that?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t worry, you can see that I’ve burnt my skin and
that it’s not exactly renewing itself. No, Gibarian left a
letter addressed to me in his cabin.”

“A letter? What did it say?”

“Nothing much. It was more of a note than a letter, with
bibliographic references — allusions to the Supplement to
the Annual and to the Apocrypha. What is this Apocrypha?”

“An antique which seems to have some relevance to our
situation. Here!” He drew from his pocket a small, lea-
therbound volume, scuffed at the edges, and handed it to
me.

I grabbed the little book.

“And what about Sartorius?”

“Him! Everyone has his own way of coping. Sartorius
is trying to remain normal — that is, to preserve his re-
spectability as an envoy on an official mission.”

“You’re joking!”

“No, I’m quite serious. We were together on another
occasion. I won’t bother you with the details, but there
were eight of us and we were down to our last 1000
pounds of oxygen. One after another, we gave up our
chores, and by the end we all had beards except Sartorius.
He was the only one who shaved and polished his shoes.
He’s like that. Now, of course, he can only pretend, act a
part — or else commit a crime.”

“A crime?”

“Perhaps that isn’t quite the right word. ‘Divorce by
ejection!’ Does that sound better?”

“Very funny!”

“Suggest something else if you don’t like it.”

“Oh, leave me alone!”

“No, let’s discuss the thing seriously. You know pretty
well as much as I do by now. Have you got a plan?”

“No, none. I haven’t the least idea what I’ll do when
. . . when she comes back. She will return, if I’ve under-
stood you correctly?”

“It’s on the cards.”

“How do they get in? The Station is hermetically
sealed. Perhaps the layer on the outer hull ”

He shook his head.

“The outer hull is in perfect condition. I don’t know
where they get in. Usually, they’re there when you wake
up, and you have to sleep eventuallyl”

“Could you barricade yourself securely inside a cabin?”

“The barricades wouldn’t survive for long. There’s
only one solution, and you can guess what that is . . .”

We both stood up.

“Just a minute. Snow! You’re suggesting we liquidate
the Station and you expect me to take the initiative and
accept the responsibility?”

“It’s not as simple as that. Obviously, we could get out,
if only as far as the satellite, and send an SOS from there.
Of course, we’ll be regarded as lunatics; we’ll be shut up
in a mad-house on Earth — unless we have the sense to
retract. A distant planet, isolation, collective derange-
ment— our case won’t seem at all out of the ordinary. But
at least we’d be better off in a mental home than we are
here: a quiet garden, little white cells, nurses, supervised
walks . . .”

Hands in his pockets, staring fixedly at a corner of the
room, he spoke with the utmost seriousness.

The red sun had disappeared over the horizon and the
ocean was a sombre desert, mottled with dying gleams,
the last rays lingering among the long tresses of the
waves. The sky was ablaze. Purple-edged clouds drifted
across this dismal red and black world..

“Well, do you want to get out, yes or no? Or not yet?”

“Always the fighter! If you knew the full implications of
what you’re asking, you wouldn’t be so insistent. It’s not
a matter of what I want, it’s a matter of what’s possible.”

“Such as what?”

“That’s the point, I don’t know.”

“We stay here then? Do you think we’ll find some
way . . . ?”

Thin, sickly-looking, his peeling face deeply lined, he
turned towards me:

“It might be worth our while to stay. We’re unlikely to
learn anything about it, but about ourselves . .

He turned, picked up his papers, and went out. I
opened my mouth to detain him, but no sound escaped
my lips.

There was nothing I could do now except wait. I went
to the window and ran my eyes absently over the dark-red
glimmer of the shadowed ocean. For a moment, I thought
of locking myself inside one of the capsules on the han-
gar-deck, but it was not an idea worth considering for
long: sooner or later, I should have to come out again.

I sat by the window, and began to leaf through the book
Snow had given me. The glowing twilight lit up the room
and colored the pages. It was a collection of articles and
treatises edited by an Otho Ravintzer, Ph.D., and its gen-
eral level was immediately obvious. Every science engen-
ders some pseudo-science, inspiring eccentrics to
explore freakish by-ways; astronomy has its parodists in
astrology, chemistry used to have them in alchemy. It was
not surprising, therefore, that Solaristics, in its early days,
had set off an explosion of marginal cogitations. Ravint-
zer’s book was full of this sort of intellectual speculation,
prefaced, it is only fair to add, by an introduction in which
the editor dissociated himself from some of the texts re-
produced. He considered, with some justice, that such a
collection could provide an invaluable period document
as much for the historian as for the psychologist of
science.

Berton’s report, divided into two parts and complete
with a summary of his log, occupied the place of honor in
the book.

From 14.00 hours to 16.40 hours, by expedition time,
the entries in the log were laconic and negative.

Altitude 3000 — or 3500 — 2500 feet ; nothing visible; ocean

empty. The same words recurred over and over again.

Then, at 16.40 hours: A red mist rising. Visibility 700 yards.
Ocean empty.

17.00 hours: fog thickening; visibility 400 yards, with clear
patches. Descending to 600 feet.

17.20 hours: in fog. Altitude 600. Visibility 20 — 40 yards.
Climbing to 1200.

17.45: altitude 1500. Pall of fog to horizon. Funnel-shaped
openings through which lean see ocean surface. Attempting to enter
one of these clearings; something is moving.

17.52: have spotted what appears to be a waterspout; it is throw-
ing up a yellow foam. Surrounded by a wall of fog. Altitude 300.
Descending to 60 feet.

The extract from Berton’s log stopped at this point.
There followed his case-history, or, more precisely, the
statement dictated by Berton and interrupted at intervals
by questions from the members of the Commission of
Enquiry.

BERTON: When I reached 100 feet it became very diffi-
cult to maintain altitude because of the violent gusts of
wind inside the cone. I had to hang on to the controls and
for a short period — about ten or fifteen minutes — I did
not look outside. I realized too late that a powerful under-
tow was dragging me back into the fog. It wasn’t like an
ordinary fog, it was a thick colloidal substance which
coated my windows. I had a lot of trouble cleaning them;
that fog— or glue rather— was obstinate stuff. Due to this
resistance, the speed of my rotor-blades was reduced by
thirty percent and I began losing height. I was afraid of
capsizing on the waves; but, even at full power, I could
maintain altitude but not increase it. I still had four boost-
er-rockets left but felt the situation was not yet desperate
enough to use them. The aircraft was shaken by shudder-
ing vibrations that grew more and more violent. Thinking
my rotor blades must have become coated with the gluey
substance, I glanced at the overload indicator, but to my
surprise it read zero. Since entering the fog, I had not
seen the sun— only a red glow. I continued to fly around

in the hope of emerging into one of the funnels, which,
after half an hour, was what happened. I found myself in
a new ‘well,’ perfectly cylindrical in shape, and several
hundred yards in diameter. The walls of the cylinder were
formed by an enormous whirlpool of fog, spiralling up-
wards. I struggled to keep in the middle, where the wind
was less violent. It was then that I noticed a change in the
ocean’s surface. The waves had almost completely disap-
peared, and the upper layer of the fluid — or whatever the
ocean is made of— was becoming transparent, with murky
streaks here and there which gradually dissolved until,
finally, it was perfectly clear. I could see distinctly to a
depth of several yards. I saw a sort of yellow sludge which
was sprouting vertical filaments. When these filaments
emerged above the surface, they had a glassy sheen. Then
they began to exude foam — they frothed — until the foam
solidified; it was like a very thick treacle. These glutinous
filaments merged and became intertwined; great bubbles
swelled up on the surface and slowly began to change
shape. Suddenly I realized that my machine was being
driven towards the wall of fog. I had to manoeuver against
the wind, and when I was able to look down again, I saw
something which looked like a garden. Yes, a garden.
Trees, hedges, paths — but it wasn’t a real garden; it was
all made of the same substance, which had hardened and
by now looked like yellow plaster. Beneath this garden,
the ocean glittered. I came down as low as I dared in order
to take a closer look.

QUESTION: Did the trees and plants you saw have leaves
on them?

BERTON: No, the shapes were only approximate, like a
model garden. That’s exactly what it was like: a model, but
lifesize. All of a sudden, it began to crack; it broke up and
split into dark crevices; a thick white liquid ran out and
collected into pools, or else drained away. The ‘earth-
quake’ became more violent, the whole thing boiled over
and was buried beneath the foam. At the same time, the
walls of the fog began to close in. I gained height rapidly
and came clear at 1000 feet.

QUESTION: Are you absolutely sure that what you saw
resembled a garden — there was no other possible inter-
pretation?

BERTON: Yes. I noticed several details. For example, I
remember seeing a place where there were some boxes in
a row. I realized later that they were probably beehives.
QUESTION: You realized later? But not at the time, not
at the moment when you actually saw them?

BERTON: No, because everything looked as though it
were made of plaster. But I saw something else.
QUESTION: What was that?

BERTON: I saw things which I can’t put a name to, be-
cause I didn’t have time to examine them carefully. Under
some bushes I thought I saw tools, long objects with
prongs. They might have been plaster models of garden
tools. But I’m not absolutely certain. Whereas I’m sure,
quite certain, that I recognized an apiary.

QUESTION: It didn’t occur to you that it might be an
hallucination?

BERTON: No. I thought it was a mirage. It never oc-
curred to me that it was an hallucination because I felt
perfectly well, and I had never see anything like it before.
When I reached 1000 feet and took another look at the
fog, it was pitted with more irregularly-shaped holes,
rather like a piece of cheese. Some of these holes were
completely hollow, and I could see the ocean waves; oth-
ers were only shallow saucers in which something was
bubbling. I descended another well and saw — the altime-
ter read 120 feet — I saw a wall lying beneath the ocean
surface. It wasn’t very deep and I could see it clearly
beneath the waves. It seemed to be the wall of a huge
building, pierced with rectangular openings, like win-
dows. I even thought I could see something moving be-
hind them, but I couldn’t be absolutely certain of that. The
wall slowly broke the surface and a mucous bubbling liq-
uid streamed down its sides. Then it suddenly broke in
half and disappeared into the depths.

I regained height and continued to fly above the fog,
the machine almost touching it, until I discovered another
clearing, much larger than the previous one.

While I was still some distance away, I noticed a pale,
almost white, object floating on the surface. My first
thought was that it was Fechner’s flying-suit, especially as
it looked vaguely human in form. I brought the aircraft
round sharply, afraid of losing my way and being unable
to find the same spot again. The shape, the body, was
moving; sometimes it seemed to be standing upright in
the trough of the waves. I accelerated and went down so
low that the machine bounced gently. I must have hit the
crest of a huge wave I was overflying. The body — yes, it
was a human body, not an atmosphere-suit — the body was
moving.

QUESTION: Did you see its face?

BERTON: Yes.

QUESTION: Who was it?

BERTON: A child.

QUESTION: What child? Did you recognize it?
BERTON: No. At any rate, I don’t remember having seen
it before. Besides, when I got closer — when I was forty
yards away, or even sooner — I realized that it was no ordi-
nary child.

QUESTION: What do you mean?

BERTON: I’ll explain. At first, I couldn’t understand what
worried me about it; it was only after a minute or two that
I realized: this child was extraordinarily large. Enormous,
in fact. Stretched out horizontally, its body rose twelve
feet above the surface of the ocean, I swear. I remembered
that when I touched the wave, its face was a little higher
than mine, even though my cockpit must have been at
least ten feet above the ocean.

QUESTION: If it was as big as that, what makes you say
it was a child?

BERTON: Because it was a tiny child.

QUESTION: Do you realize, Berton, that your answer
doesn’t make sense?

BERTON: On the contrary. I could see its face, and it was
a very young child. Besides, its proportions corresponded
exactly to the proportions of a child’s body. It was a . . .
babe in arms. No, I exaggerate. It was probably two or
three years old. It had black hair and blue eyes — enor-

mous blue eyes! It was naked — completely naked — like a
new-born baby. It was wet, or I should say glossy; its skin
was shiny. I was shattered. I no longer thought it was a
mirage. I could see this child so distinctly. It rose and fell
with the waves; but apart from this general motion, it was
making other movements, and they were horrible!
QUESTION: Why? What was it doing?

BERTON: It was more like a doll in a museum, only a
living doll. It opened and closed its mouth, it made vari-
ous gestures, horrible gestures.

QUESTION: What do you mean?

BERTON: I was watching it from about twenty yards away
— I don’t suppose I went any closer. But, as I’ve already
told you, it was enormous. I could see very clearly. Its eyes
sparkled and you really would have thought it was a living
child, if it hadn’t been for the movements, the gestures,
as though someone was trying ... It was as though some-
one else was responsible for the gestures . . .
QUESTION: Try to be more explicit.

BERTON: It’s difficult. I’m talking of an impression,
more of an intuition. I didn’t analyze it, but I knew that
those gestures weren’t natural.

QUESTION: Do you mean, for example, that the hands
didn’t move as human hands would move, because the
joints were not sufficiently supple?

BERTON: No, not at all. But . . . these movements had no
meaning. Each of our movements means something,
more or less, serves some purpose . . .

QUESTION: Do you think so? The movements of an
infant don’t have much meaning!

BERTON: I know. But an infant’s movements are con-
fused, random, uncoordinated. The movements I saw
were . . . er . . . yes, that’s it, they were methodical move-
ments. They were performed one after another, like a
series of exercises; as though someone had wanted to
make a study of what this child was capable of doing with
its hands, its torso, its mouth. The face was more horrify-
ing than the rest, because the human face has an expres-
sion, and this face ... I don’t know how to describe it. It
was alive, yes, but it wasn’t human. Or rather, the features

as a whole, the eyes, the complexion, were, but the expres-
sion, the movements of the face, were certainly not.
QUESTION: Were they grimaces? Do you know what
happens to a person’s face during an epileptic fit?
BERTON: Yes. I’ve watched an epileptic fit. I know what
you mean. No, it was something quite different. Epilepsy
provokes spasms, convulsions. The movements I’m talk-
ing about were fluid, continuous, graceful . . . melodious,
if one can say that of a movement. It’s the nearest defini-
tion I can think of. But this face ... a face can’t divide itself
into two — one half gay, the other sad, one half scowling
and the other amiable, one half frightened and the other
triumphant. But that’s how it was with this child’s face. In
addition to that, all these movements and changes of ex-
pression succeeded one another with unbelievable rapid-
ity. I stayed down there a very short time, perhaps ten
seconds, perhaps less.

QUESTION: And you claim to have seen all that in such
a short time? Besides, how do you know how long you
were there? Did you check your chronometer?
BERTON: No, but I’ve been flying for seventeen years
and, in my job, one can measure instinctively, to the near-
est second, the duration of what would be called an instant
of time. It’s an acquired faculty, and essential for success-
ful navigation. A pilot isn’t worth his salt if he can’t tell
whether a particular phenomenon lasts five or ten sec-
onds, whatever the circumstances. It’s the same with ob-
servation. We learn, over the years, to take in everything
at a glance.

QUESTION: Is that all you saw?

BERTON: No, but I don’t remember the rest so precisely.
I suppose I must already have seen more than enough; my
attention faltered. The fog began to close in, and I had to
climb. I climbed, and for the first time in my life I all but
capsized. My hands were shaking so much that I had diffi-
culty in handling the controls. I think I shouted some-
thing, called up the base, even though I knew we were not
in radio contact.

QUESTION: Did you then try and get back?

BERTON: No. In the end, having gained height, I thought

to myself that Fechner was probably in the bottom of one
of the wells. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what I
thought. I told myself that everything was possible, and
that it would also be possible for me to find Fechner. I
decided to investigate every clearing I came across along
my route. At the third attempt I gave up. When I had
regained height, I knew it was useless to persist after what
I had just seen on this, the third, occasion. I couldn’t go
on any longer. I should add, as you already know, that I
was suffering from bouts of nausea and that I vomited in
the cockpit. I couldn’t understand it; I have never been
sick in my life.

COMMENT: It was a symptom of poisoning.

BERTON: Perhaps. I don’t know. But what I saw on this
third occasion I did not imagine. That was not the effect
of poisoning.

QUESTION: How can you possibly know?

BERTON: It wasn’t an hallucination. An hallucination is
created by one’s own brain, wouldn’t you say?
COMMENT: Yes.

BERTON: Well, my brain couldn’t have created what I
saw. I’ll never believe that. My brain wouldn’t have been
capable of it.

COMMENT: Get on with describing what it was!
BERTON: Before I do so, I should like to know how the
statements I’ve already made will be interpreted.
QUESTION: What does that matter?

BERTON: For me, it matters very much indeed. I have
said that I saw things which I shall never forget. If the
Commission recognizes, even with certain reservations,
that my testimony is credible, and that a study of the ocean
must be undertaken — I mean a study orientated in the
light of my statements — then I’ll tell everything. But if the
Commission considers that it is all delusions, then I
refuse to say anything more.

QUESTION: Why?

BERTON: Because the contents of my hallucinations be-
long to me and I don’t have to give an account of them,
whereas I am obliged to give an account of what I saw on
Solaris.

QUESTION: Does that mean that you refuse to answer

any more questions until the expedition authorities have
announced their findings? You realize, of course, that the
Commission isn’t empowered to take an immediate deci-
sion?

BERTON: Yes.

The first minute ended here. There followed a frag-
ment of the second minute drawn up eleven days later.

PRESIDENT: . . . after due consideration, the Commis-
sion, composed of three doctors, three biologists, a
physicist, a mechanical engineer and the deputy head of
the expedition, has reached the conclusion that Berton’s
report is symptomatic of hallucinations caused by atmos-
pheric poisoning, consequent upon inflammation of the
associative zone of the cerebral cortex, and that Berton’s
account bears no, or at any rate no appreciable, relation
to reality.

BERTON: Excuse me, what does “no appreciable rela-
tion” mean? In what proportion is reality appreciable or
not?

PRESIDENT: I haven’t finished. Independently of these
conclusions, the Commission has duly registered a dis-
senting vote from Dr. Archibald Messenger, who consid-
ers the phenomena described by Berton to be objectively
possible and declares himself in favor of a scrupulous
investigation.

BERTON: I repeat my question.

PRESIDENT: The answer is simple. “No appreciable re-
lation to reality” means that phenomena actually ob-
served may have formed the basis of your hallucinations.
In the course of a nocturnal stroll, a perfectly sane man
can imagine he sees a living creature in a bush stirred by
the wind. Such illusions are all the more likely to affect an
explorer lost on a strange planet and breathing a poiso-
nous atmosphere. This verdict is in no way prejudicial to
you, Berton. Will you now be good enough to let us know
your decision?

BERTON: First of all, I should like to know the possible
consequences of this dissenting vote of Dr. Messenger’s.
PRESIDENT: Virtually none. We shall carry on our work
along the lines originally laid down.

BERTON: Is our interview on record?

PRESIDENT: Yes.

BERTON: In that case, I should like to say that although
the Commission’s decision may not be prejudicial to me
personally, it is prejudicial to the spirit of the expedition
itself. Consequently, as I have already stated, I refuse to
answer any further questions.

PRESIDENT: Is that all?

BERTON: Yes. Except that I should like to meet Dr. Mes-
senger. Is that possible?

PRESIDENT: Of course.

That was the end of the second minute. At the bottom
of the page there was a note in minuscule handwriting to
the effect that, the following day, Dr. Messenger had
talked to Berton for nearly three hours. As a result of this
conversation. Messenger had once more begged the ex-
pedition Council to undertake further investigations in
order to check the pilot’s statements. Berton had pro-
duced some new and extremely convincing revelations,
which Messenger could not divulge unless the Council
reversed its negative decision. The Council— Shannahan,
Timolis and Trahier— rejected the motion and the affair
was closed.

The book also reproduced a photocopy of the last page
of a letter, or rather, the draft of a letter, found by Messen-
ger’s executors after his death. Ravintzer, in spite of his
researches, had been unable to discover if this letter had
ever been sent.

“• • • obtuse minds, a pyramid of stupidity,” — the text
began. “Anxious to preserve its authority, the Council —
more precisely Shannahan and Timolis (Trahier’s vote
doesn’t count) — has rejected my recommendations. Now
I am taking the matter up directly with the Institute; but,
as you can well imagine, my protestations won’t convince
anybody. Bound as I am by oath, I can’t, alas, reveal to you
what Berton told me. If the Council disregarded Berton’s
testimony, it was basically because Berton has no scien-
tific training, although any scientist would envy the pres-
ence of mind and the gift of observation shown by this
pilot. I should be grateful if you could send me the follow-
ing information by return post:

i) Fechner’s biography, in particular details about his
childhood.

ii) Everything you know about his family, facts and dates
— he probably lost his parents while still a child.

iii) The topography of the place where he was brought up.

I should like once more to tell you what I think about

all this. As you know, some time after the departure of
Fechner and Carucci, a spot appeared in the centre of the
red sun. This chromospheric eruption caused a magnetic
storm chiefly over the southern hemisphere, where our
base was situated, according to the information provided
by the satellite, and the radio links were cut. The other
parties were scouring the planet’s surface over a relatively
restricted area, whereas Fechner and Carucci had tra-
velled a considerable distance from the base.

Never, since our arrival on the planet, had we observed
such a persistent fog or such an unremitting silence.

I imagine that what Berton saw was one of the phases
of a kind of ‘Operation Man’ which this viscous monster
was engaged in. The source of all the various forms ob-
served by Berton is Fechner — or rather, Fechner’s brain,
subjected to an unimaginable ‘psychic dissection’ for the
purposes of a sort of re-creation, an experimental recon-
struction, based on impressions (undoubtedly the most
durable ones) engraved on his memory.

I know this sounds fantastic; I know that I may be mis-
taken. But do please help me. At the moment, I am on the
Alaric, where I look forward to receiving your reply.

Yours,

A.”

It was a growing dark, and I could scarcely make out the
blurred print at the top of the grey page — the last page
describing Berton’s adventure. For my part, my own ex-
perience led me to regard Berton as a trustworthy wit-
ness.

I turned towards the window. A few clouds still glowed
like dying embers above the horizon. The ocean was in-
visible, blanketed by the purple darkness.

The strips of paper fluttered idly beneath the air-vents.
There was a whiff of ozone in the still, warm air.

There was nothing heroic in our decision to remain on
the Station. The time for heroism was over, vanished with
the era of the great interplanetary triumphs, of daring
expeditions and sacrifices. Fechner, the ocean’s first vic-
tim, belonged to a distant past. I had almost stopped
caring about the identity of Snow’s and Sartorius’s
visitors. Soon I told myself, we would cease to be
ashamed, to keep ourselves apart. If we could not get rid
of our visitors, we would accustom ourselves to their
presence, learn to live with them. If their Creator altered
the rules of the game, we would adapt ourselves to the new
rules, even if at first we jibbed or rebelled, even if one of
us despaired and killed himself. Eventually, a certain equi-
librium would be reestablished.

Night had come; no different from many nights on
Earth. Now I could make out only the white contours of
the basin and the smooth surface of the mirror.

I stood up. Groping my way to the basin, I fumbled
among the objects which cluttered up the shelf, and found
the packet of cotton wool. I washed my face with a damp
wad and stretched out on the bed.

A moth fluttered its wings. . . no, it was the ventilator-
strip. The whirring stopped, then started up again. I could
no longer see the window; everything had merged into
darkness. A mysterious ray of light pierced the blackness
and lingered in front of me— against the wall, or the black
sky? I remembered how the blank stare of the night had
frightened me the day before, and I smiled at the thought.
I was no longer afraid of the night; I was not afraid of
anything. I raised my wrist and looked at the ring of phos-
phorescent figures; another hour, and the blue day would
dawn.

I breathed deeply, savoring the darkness, my mind
empty and at rest.

Shifting my position, I felt the flat shape of the tape-
recorder against my hip: Gibarian, his voice immortalized
on the spools of tape. I had forgotten to resurrect him, to
listen to him — the only thing I could do for him any more.

I took the tape-recorder out of my pocket in order to hide
it under the bed.

I heard a rustling sound; the door opened.

“Kris?” An anxious voice whispered my name. “Kris,
are you there? It’s so dark. .

I answered:

“Yes, I’m here. Don’t be frightened, come!”

The Conference

I was lying on my back, with Rheya’s head resting on my
shoulder.

The darkness was peopled now. I could hear footsteps.
Something was piling up above me, higher and higher,
infinitely high. The night transfixed me; the night look
possession of me, enveloped and penetrated me, impal-
pable, insubstantial. Turned to stone, I had ceased
breathing, there was no air to breathe. As though from a
distance, I heard the beating of my heart. I summoned up
all my remaining strength, straining every nerve, and
waited for death. I went on waiting. . . I seemed to be
growing smaller, and the invisible sky, horizonless, the
formless immensity of space, without clouds, without
stars, receded, extended and grew bigger all round me. I
tried to crawl out of bed, but there was no bed; beneath
the cover of darkness there was a void. I pressed my hands
to my face. I no longer had any fingers or any hands. I
wanted to scream. . .

The room floated in a blue penumbra, which outlined
the furniture and the laden bookshelves, and drained ev-
erything of color. A pearly whiteness flooded the window.

I was drenched with sweat. I glanced to one side. Rheya
was gazing at me.

She raised her head.

“Has your arm gone to sleep?”

Her eyes too had been drained of color; they were grey,
but luminous, beneath the black lashes.

“What?” Her murmured words had seemed like a ca-
ress even before I understood their meaning. “No. Ah,
yes!” I said, at last.

I put my hand on her shoulder; I had pins and needles
in my fingers.

“Did you have a bad dream?” she asked.

I drew her to me with my other hand.

“A dream? Yes, I was dreaming. And you, didn’t you
sleep?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m sleepy. But that
mustn’t stop you from sleeping. . . Why are you looking
at me like that?”

I closed my eyes. Her heart was beating against mine.
Her heart? A mere appendage, I told myself. But nothing
surprised me any longer, not even my own indifference.
I had crossed the frontiers of fear and despair. I had come
a long way — further than anyone had ever come before.

I raised myself on my elbow. Daybreak. . . and the peace
that comes with dawn? A silent storm had set the cloudless
horizon ablaze. A streak of light, the first ray of the blue
sun, penetrated the room and broke up into sharp-edged
reflections; there was a crossfire of sparks, which corus-
cated off the mirror, the door-handles, the nickel pipes.
The light scattered, falling on to every smooth surface as
though it wanted to conquer ever more space, to set the
room alight. I looked at Rheya; the pupils of her grey eyes
had contracted.

She asked in an expressionless voice, “Is the night over
already?”

“Night never lasts long here.”

“And us?”

“What about us?”

“Are we going to stay here long?”

Coming from her, the question had its comic side; but
when I spoke, my voice held no trace of gaiety.

“Quite a long time, probably. Why, don’t you want to
stay here?”

Her eyes did not blink. She was looking at me inquir-
ingly. Did I see her blink? I was not sure. She drew back
the blanket and I saw the little pink scar on her arm.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because you’re very beautiful.”

She smiled, without a trace of mischief, modestly ac-
knowledging my compliment.

“Really? It’s as though. . . as though. . . ”

“What?”

“As though you were doubtful of something.”

“What nonsense!”

As though you didn’t trust me and I were hiding some-
thing from you. . .”

“Rubbish!”

“By the way you’re denying it, I can tell I’m right.”

The light became blinding. Shading my eyes with my
hand, I looked for my dark glasses. They were on the
table. When I was back by her side, Rheya smiled.

“What about me?”

It took me a minute to understand what she meant.

“Dark glasses?”

I got up and began to hunt through drawers and
shelves, pushing aside books and instruments. I found
two pairs of glasses, which I gave to Rheya. They were too
big; they fell half way down her nose.

The shutters slid over the window; it was dark once
more. Groping, I helped Rheya remove her glasses and
put both pairs down under the bed.

“What shall we do now?” she asked.

“At night-time, one sleeps!”

“Kris. . . ”

“Yes?”

“Do you want a compress for your forehead?”

“No, thanks. Thank you. . . my darling.”

I don’t know why I had added those two words. In the
darkness, I took her by her graceful shoulders. I felt them
tremble, and I knew, without the least shadow of doubt,
that I held Rheya in my arms. Or rather, I understood in
that moment that she was not trying to deceive me; it was
I who was deceiving her, since she sincerely believed her-
self to be Rheya.

I dropped off several times after that, and each time an
anguished start jolted me awake. Panting, exhausted, I
pressed myself closer to her; my heart gradually growing
calmer. She touched me cautiously on the cheeks and
forehead with the tips of her fingers, to see whether or not
I was feverish. It was Rheya, the real Rheya, the one and
only Rheya.

A change came over me; I ceased to struggle and al-
most at once I fell asleep.

I was awakened by an agreeable sensation of coolness.
My face was covered by a damp cloth. I pulled it off and
found Rheya leaning over me. She was smiling and
squeezing out a second cloth over a bowl.

“What a sleep!” she said, laying another compress on
my forehead. “Are you ill?”

“No.”

I wrinkled my forehead; the skin was supple once again.
Rheya sat on the edge of my bed, her black hair brushed
back over the collar of a bathrobe — a man’s bathrobe,
with orange and black stripes, the sleeves turned back to
the elbow.

I was terribly hungry; it was at least twenty hours since
my last meal. When Rheya had finished her ministrations
I got up. Two dresses, draped over the back of a chair
caught my eye — two absolutely identical white dresses,
each decorated with a row of red buttons. I myself had
helped Rheya out of one of them, and she had reappeared,
yesterday evening, dressed in the second.

She followed my glance.

“I had to cut the seam open with scissors,” she said. “I
think the zip fastener must have got stuck.”

The sight of the two identical dresses filled me with a
horror which exceeded anything I had felt hitherto. Rheya
was busy tidying up the medicine chest. I turned my back
and bit my knuckles. Unable to take my eyes off the two
dresses — or rather the original dress and its double — I
backed towards the door. The basin tap was running
noisily. I opened the door and, slipping out of the room,
cautiously closed it behind me. I heard the sound of run-
ning water, the clinking of bottles; then, suddenly, all
sound ceased. I waited, my jaw clenched, my hands grip-

ping the door handle, but with little hope of holding it
shut. It was nearly torn from my grasp by a savage jerk.
But the door did not open; it shook and vibrated from top
to bottom. Dazed, I let go of the handle and stepped back.
The panel, made of some plastic material, caved in as
though an invisible person at my side had tried to break
into the room. The steel frame bent further and further
inwards and the paint was cracking. Suddenly I under-
stood: instead of pushing the door, which opened out-
wards, Rheya was trying to open it by pulling it towards
her. The reflection of the lighting strip in the ceiling was
distorted in the white-painted door-panel; there was a
resounding crack and the panel, forced beyond its limits,
gave way. Simultaneously the handle vanished, torn from
its mounting. Two bloodstained hands appeared, thrust-
ing through the opening and smearing the white paint
with blood. The door split in two, the broken halves hang-
ing askew on their hinges. First a face appeared, deathly
pale, then a wild-looking apparition, dressed in an orange
and black bathrobe, flung itself sobbing upon my chest.

I wanted to escape, but it was too late, and I was rooted
to the spot. Rheya was breathing convulsively, her dis-
hevelled head drumming against my chest. Before I could
put my arms round her to hold her up, Rheya collapsed.

Avoiding the ragged edges of the broken panel, I car-
ried her into the room and laid her on the bed. Her finger-
tips were grazed and the nails torn. When her hands
turned upwards, I saw that the palms were cut to the bone.
I examined her face; her glazed eyes showed no sign of
recognition.

“Rheya.”

The only answer was an inarticulate groan.

I went over to the medicine chest. The bed creaked; I
turned round; Rheya was sitting up, looking at her bleed-
ing hands with astonishment.

“Kris,” she sobbed, “I. . . I. . . what happened to me?”

“You hurt yourself trying to break down the door,” I
answered curtly.

My lips were twitching convulsively, and I had to bite
the lower one to keep it under control.

Rheya’s glance took in the pieces of door-panel hang-
ing from the steel frame, then she turned her eyes back
towards me. She was doing her best to hide her terror, but
I could see her chin trembling.

I cut off some squares of gauze, picked up a pot of
antiseptic powder and returned to the bedside. The glass
jar slipped through my hands and shattered— but I no
longer needed it.

I lifted one of Rheya’s hands. The nails, still surrounded
by traces of clotted blood, had regrown. There was a pink
scar in the hollow of her palm, but even this scar was
healing, disappearing in front of my eyes.

I sat beside her and stroked her face, trying to smile
without much success.

“What did you do that for, Rheya?”

“I did. . . that?”

With her eyes, she indicated the door.

“Yes. . . Don’t you remember?”

“No. . . that is, I saw you weren’t there, I was very
frightened, and. .

“And what?”

“I looked for you. I thought that perhaps you were in
the bathroom. .

Only then did I notice that the sliding door covering the
entrance to the bathroom had been pushed back.

“And then?”

“I ran to the door.”

“And after that?”

“I can’t remember. . .Something must have happen-

ed “What?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you remember?”

“I was sitting here, on the bed.”

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, got up and
went over to the shattered door.

“Kris!”

Walking up behind her, I took her by the shoulders; she
was shaking. She suddenly turned and whispered:

“Kris, Kris. . .”

“Calm yourself!”

“Kris, if it’s me. . .Kris, am I an epileptic?”

“What an extraordinary idea, my sweet. The doors in
this place are rather special. .

We left the room as the shutter was grinding its way up
the window; the blue sun was sinking into the ocean.

I guided Rheya to the small kitchen on the other side of
the dome. Together we raided the cupboards and the
refrigerators. I soon noticed that Rheya was scarcely bet-
ter than I was at cooking or even at opening tins. I de-
voured the contents of two tins and drank innumerable
cups of coffee. Rheya also ate, but as children eat when
they are not hungry and do not want to displease their
parents; on the other hand, she was not forcing herself,
simply taking in nourishment automatically, indifferently.

After our meal, we went into the sick bay, next to the
radio cabin. I had had an idea. I told Rheya that I wanted
to give her a medical examination — a straightforward
check-up — sat her in a mechanical chair, and took a sy-
ringe and some needles out of the sterilizer. I knew ex-
actly where each object was to be found; as far as the
model of the Station’s interior was concerned, the in-
structors had not overlooked a single detail during my
training course. Rheya held out her fingers; I took a sam-
ple of blood. I smeared the blood on to a slide which I laid
in the suction pipe, introduced it into the vacuum tank and
bombarded it with silver ions.

Performing a familiar task had a soothing effect, and I
felt better. Rheya, leaning back on the cushions in the
mechanical chair, gazed around at the instruments in the
sick bay.

The buzzing of the videophone broke the silence; I
lifted the receiver:

“Kelvin.”

I looked at Rheya; she was still quiet, apparently ex-
hausted by her recent efforts.

I heard a sigh of relief.

“At last.”

It was Snow. I waited, the receiver pressed close to my
ear.

“You’ve had a visit, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you busy?”

“Yes.”

“A little auscultation, eh?”

“I suppose you’ve got a better suggestion — a game of
chess maybe?”

“Don’t be so touchy, Kelvin! Sartorius wants to meet
you, he wants all three of us to meet.”

“Very kind of him!” I answered, taken aback. “But. . .”
I stopped, then went on: “Is he alone?”

“No. I haven’t explained properly. He wants to have a
talk with us. We’ll set up a three-way videophone link, but
with the telescreen lenses covered.”

“I see. Why didn’t he contact me himself? Is he fright-
ened of me?”

“Quite possibly,” grunted Snow. “What do you say?”

“A conference. In an hour’s time. Will that suit you?”

“That’s fine.”

I could see him on the screen— just his face, about the
size of a fist. For a moment, he looked at me attentively;
I could hear the crackling of the electric current. Then he
said, hesitantly:

“Are you getting on all right?”

“Not too bad. How about you?”

“Not so well as you, I dare say. May I. . .?”

“Do you want to come over here?”

I glanced at Rheya over my shoulder. She was leaning
back, legs crossed, her head bent. With a morose air, she
was fiddling mechanically with the little chrome ball on the
end of a chain fixed to the arm-rest.

Snow’s voice erupted:

“Stop that, do you hear? I told you to stop it!”

I could see his profile on the screen, but I could no
longer hear him although his lips were moving — he had
put his hand over the microphone.

“No, I can’t come,” he said quickly. “Later perhaps, in
any case. I’ll contact you in an hour.”

The screen went blank; I replaced the receiver.

“Who was it?” asked Rheya indifferently.

“Snow, a cybernetician. You don’t know him.”

“Is this going on much longer?”

“Are you bored?”

I put the first of the series of slides into the neutron
microscope, and, one after another, I pressed the differ-
ent-colored switches; the magnetic fields rumbled hol-
lowly.

“There’s not much to do in here, and if my humble
company isn’t enough for you. . .”

I was talking distractedly, with long gaps between my
words.

I pulled the big black hood round the eye-piece of the
microscope towards me, and leaned my forehead against
the resilient foam-rubber viewer. I could hear Rheya’s
voice, but without taking in what she was saying. Beneath
my gaze, sharply foreshortened, was a vast desert flooded
with silvery light, and strewn with rounded boulders — red
corpuscles— which trembled and wriggled behind a veil of
mist. I focused the eye-piece and penetrated further into
the depths of the silvery landscape. Without taking my
eyes away from the viewer, I turned the view-finder; when
a boulder, a single corpuscle, detached itself and ap-
peared at the junction of the cross-hairs, I enlarged the
image. The lens had apparently picked up a deformed
erythrocyte, sunken in the centre, whose uneven edges
projected sharp shadows over the depths of a circular
crater. The crater, bristling with silver ion deposits, ex-
tended beyond the microscope’s field of vision. The
nebulous outlines of threads of albumen, distorted and
atrophied, appeared in the midst of an opalescent liquid.
A worm of albumen twisted and turned beneath the cross-
hairs of the lens. Gradually I increased the enlargement.
At any moment, I should reach the limit of this explora-
tion of the depths; the shadow of a molecule occupied the
whole of the space; then the image became fuzzy.

There was nothing to be seen. There should have been
the ferment of a quivering cloud of atoms, but I saw noth-
ing. A dazzling light filled the screen, which was flawlessly
clear. I pushed the lever to its utmost. The angry, whirring
noise grew louder, but the screen remained a blank. An

alarm signal sounded once, then was repeated; the circuit
was overloaded. I took a final look at the silvery desert,
then I cut the current.

I looked at Rheya. She was in the middle of a yawn which
she changed adroitly into a smile.

“Am I in good health?” she asked.

“Excellent. Couldn’t be better.”

I continued to look at her and once more I felt as
though something was crawling along my lower lip. What
had happened exactly? What was the meaning of it? Was
this body, frail and weak in appearance but indestructible
in reality, actually made of nothing? I gave the microscope
cylinder a blow with my fist. Was the instrument out of
order? No, I knew that it was working perfectly. I had
followed the procedure faithfully: first the cells, then the
albumen, then the molecules; and everything was just as
I was accustomed to seeing it in the course of examining
thousands of slides. But the final step, into the heart of the
matter, had taken me nowhere.

I put a ligature on Rheya, took some blood from a
median vein and transferred it to a graduated glass, then
divided it between several test-tubes and began the ana-
lyses. These took longer than usual; I was rather out of
practice. The reactions were normal, every one of them.

I dropped some congealed acid on to a coral-tinted
pearl. Smoke. The blood turned grey and a dirty foam
rose to the surface. Disintegration, decomposition, faster
and faster! I turned my back to get another test-tube;
when I looked again at the experiment, I nearly dropped
the slim glass phial.

Beneath the skin of dirty foam, a dark coral was rising.
The blood, destroyed by the acid, was re-creating itself.
It was crazy, impossible!

“Kris.” I heard my name called, as though from a great
distance. “Kris, the videophone!”

“What? Oh, thanks.”

The instrument had been buzzing for some time, but I
had only just noticed it.

I picked up the receiver:

“Kelvin.”

“Snow. We are now all three plugged into the same
circuit.”

The high-pitched voice of Sartorius came over the re-
ceiver:

“Greetings, Dr. Kelvin!” It was the wary tone of voice,
full of false assurance, of the lecturer who knows he is on
tenuous ground.

“Good-day to you, Dr. Sartorius!”

I wanted to laugh; but in the circumstances I hardly felt
I could yield to a mood of hilarity. After all, which of us
was the laughing stock? In my hand I held a test-tube
containing some blood. I shook it. The blood coagulated.
Had I been the victim of an illusion a moment ago? Had
I, perhaps, been mistaken?

“I should like to set forth, gentlemen, certain questions
concerning the. . . the phantoms.”

I listened to Sartorius, but my mind refused to take in
his words. I was pondering the coagulated blood and
shutting out this distracting voice.

“Let’s call them Phi-creatures,” Snow interjected.

“Very well, agreed.”

A vertical line, bisecting the screen and barely percepti-
ble, showed that I was linked to two channels: on either
side of this line, I should have seen two images — Snow
and Sartorius. But the light-rimmed screen remained
dark. Both my interlocutors had covered the lenses of
their sets.

“Each of us has made various experiments.” The nasal
voice still held the same wariness. There was a pause.

“I suggest first of all that we pool such knowledge as we
have acquired so far,” Sartorius went on. “Afterwards, I
shall venture to communicate to you the conclusions that
I, personally, have reached. If you would be so good as to
begin. Dr. Kelvin. . .”

“Me?”

All of a sudden, I sensed Rheya watching me. I put my
hand on the table and rolled the test-tube under the in-
strument racks. Then I perched myself on a stool which
I dragged up with my foot. I was about to decline to give
an opinion when, to my surprise, I heard myself answer:

100

“Right. A little talk? I haven’t done much, but I can tell
you about it. A histological sample. . .certain reactions.
Micro-reactions. I have the impression that. . .”1 did not
know how to go on. Suddenly I found my tongue and
continued: “Everything looks normal, but it’s a camou-
flage. A cover. In a way, it’s a super-copy, a reproduction
which is superior to the original. I’ll explain what I mean:
there exists, in man, an absolute limit— a term to struc-
tural divisibility — whereas here, the frontiers have been
pushed back. We are dealing with a sub-atomic struc-
ture.”

“Just a minute, just a minute! Kindly be more precise!”
Sartorius interrupted.

Snow said nothing. Did I catch an echo of his rapid
breathing? Rheya was looking at me again. I realized that,
in my excitement, I had almost shouted the last words.
Calmer, I settled myself on my uncomfortable perch and
closed my eyes. How could I be more precise?

“The atom is the ultimate constituent element of our
bodies. My guess is that the Phi-beings are constituted of
units smaller than ordinary atoms, much smaller.”

“Mesons,” put in Sartorius. He did not sound in the
least surprised.

“No, not mesons. . . I would have seen them. The power
of this instrument here is between a 10th to a 20th of an
angstrom, isn’t it? But nothing is visible, nothing whatso-
ever. So it can’t be mesons. More likely neutrinos.”

“How do you account for that theory? Conglomera-
tions of neutrinos are unstable. .

“I don’t know. I’m not a physicist. Perhaps a magnetic
field could stabilize them. It’s not my province. In any
event, if my observations are correct, the structure is
made up of particles at least ten thousand times smaller
than atoms. Wait a minute, I haven’t finished! If the al-
buminous molecules and the cells were directly con-
structed from micro-atoms, they must be proportionally
even smaller. This applies to the corpuscles, the micro-
organisms, everything. Now, the dimensions are those of
atomic structures. Consequently, the albumen, the cell
and the nucleus of the cell are nothing but camouflage.

101

The real structure, which determines the functions of the
visitor, remains concealed.”

“Kelvin!”

Snow had uttered a stifled cry. I stopped, horrified. I
had said “visitor.”

Rheya had not overheard. At any rate, she had not un-
derstood. Her head in her hand, she was staring out of the
window, her delicate profile etched against the purple
dawn.

My distant interlocutors were silent; I could hear their
breathing.

“There’s something in what he says,” Snow muttered.

“Yes,” remarked Sartorius, “but for one fact: Kelvin’s
hypothetical particles have nothing to do with the struc-
ture of the ocean. The ocean is composed of atoms.”

“Perhaps it’s capable of producing neutrinos,” I re-
plied.

Suddenly I was bored with all their talk. The conversa-
tion was pointless, and not even amusing.

“Kelvin’s hypothesis explains this extraordinary resis-
tance and the speed of regeneration,” Snow growled.
“They probably carry their own energy source as well;
they don’t need food. . .”

“I believe I have the chair,” Sartorius interrupted. The
self-designated chairman of the debate was clinging exas-
peratingly to his role. “I should like to raise the question
of the motivation behind the appearance of the Phi-crea-
tures. I put it to you as follows: what are the Phi-creatures?
They are not autonomous individuals, nor copies of ac-
tual persons. They are merely projections materializing
from our brains, based on a given individual.”

I was struck by the soundness of this description; Sar-
torius might not be very sympathetic, but he was certainly
no fool.

I rejoined the conversation:

“I think you’re right. Your definition explains why a
particular per. . .creation appears rather than another.
The origin of the materialization lies in the most durable
imprints of memory, those which are especially well-
defined, but no single imprint can be completely isolated,
and in the course of the reproduction, fragments of

102

related imprints are absorbed. Thus the new arrival
sometimes reveals a more extensive knowledge than that
of the individual of whom it is a copy. .

“Kelvin!” shouted Snow once more.

It was only Snow who reacted to my lapses; Sartorius
did not seem to be affected by them. Did this mean that
Sartorius’s visitor was less perspicacious than Snow’s?
For a moment, I imagined the scholarly Sartorius cohabit-
ing with a cretinous dwarf.

“Indeed, that corresponds with our observations,” Sar-
torius said. “Now, let us consider the motivation behind
the apparition! It is natural enough to assume, in the first
instance, that we are the object of an experiment. When
I examine this proposition, the experiment seems to me
badly designed. When we carry out an experiment, we
profit by the results and, above all, we carefully note the
defects of our methods. As a result, we introduce modifi-
cations in our future procedure. But, in the case with
which we are concerned, not a single modification has
occurred. The Phi-creatures reappear exactly as they
were, down to the last detail. . .as vulnerable as before,
each time we attempt to. . .to rid ourselves of them. . .”

“Exactly,” I broke in, “a recoil, with no compensating
mechanism, as Dr. Snow would say. Conclusions?”

“Simply that the thesis of experimentation is inconsist-
ent with this. . . this unbelievable bungling. The ocean is
. . .precise. The dual-level structure of the Phi-creatures
testifies to this precision. Within the prescribed limits, the
Phi-creatures behave in the same way as the real. . .the
. . .er. . . ”

He could not disentangle himself.

“The originals,” said Snow, in a loud whisper.

“Yes, the originals. But when the situation no longer
corresponds to the normal faculties of. . .er. . .the origi-
nal, the Phi-creature suffers a sort of ‘disconnection of
consciousness,’ followed immediately by unusual, non-
human manifestations. .

“It’s true,” I said, “and we can amuse ourselves draw-
ing up a catalogue of the behavior of. . .of these creatures
— a totally frivolous occupation!”

“I’m not so sure of that,” protested Sartorius. I sud-

103

denly realized why he irritated me so much: he didn’t talk,
he lectured, as though he were in the chair at the Institute.
He seemed to be incapable of expressing himself in any
other way. “Here we come to the question of individual-
ity,” he went on, “of which, I am quite sure, the ocean has
not the smallest inkling. I think that the. . . er. . . delicate
or shocking aspect of our present situation is completely
beyond its comprehension.”

“You think its activities are unpremeditated?”

I was somewhat bewildered by Sartorius’s point of view,
but on second thought, I realized that it could not be
dismissed.

“No, unlike our colleague Snow, I don’t believe there
is malice, or deliberate cruelty. . .”

Snow broke in:

“I’m not suggesting it has human feelings, I’m merely
trying to find an explanation for these continual reappear-
ances.”

With a secret desire to nag poor Sartorius, I said:

“Perhaps they are plugged into a contrivance which
goes round and round, endlessly repeating itself, like a
gramophone record. . .”

“Gentlemen, I beg you, let us not waste time! I haven’t
yet finished. In normal circumstances, I would have felt it
premature to present a report, even a provisional one, on
the progress of my research; in view of the prevailing
situation, however, I think I may allow myself to speak out.
I have the impression— only an impression, mark you —
that Dr. Kelvin’s hypothesis is not without validity. I am
alluding to the hypothesis of a neutrino structure. . .Our
knowledge in this field is purely theoretical. We did not
know if there was any possibility of stablizing such struc-
tures. Now a clearly defined solution offers itself to us. A
means of neutralizing the magnetic field that maintains
the stability of the structure. . .”

A few moments previously, I had noticed that the
screen was flickering with light. Now a split appeared
from top to bottom of the left-hand side. I saw something
pink move slowly out of view. Then the lens-cover slipped
again, disclosing the screen.

104

Sartorius gave an anguished cry:

“Go away! Go away!”

I saw his hands flapping and struggling, then his fore-
arms, covered by the wide sleeves of the laboratory gown.
A bright golden disc shone out for an instant, then every-
thing went dark. Only then did I realize that this golden
disc was a straw hat. . .

I took a deep breath.

“Snow?”

An exhausted voice replied:

“Yes, Kelvin. . . ’’Hearing his voice, I realized that I had
become quite fond of him, and that I preferred not to
know who or what his companion was. “That’s enough for
now, don’t you think?” he said.

“I agree.” Before he could cut off, I added quickly:
“Listen, if you can, come and see me, either in the operat-
ing room or in my cabin.”

“OK, but I don’t know when.”

The conference was over.

105

The Monsters

I woke up in the middle of the night to find the light on
and Rheya crouched at the end of the bed, wrapped in a
sheet, her shoulders shaking with silent tears. I called her
name and asked her what was wrong, but she only curled
up tighter.

Still half asleep, and barely emerged from the night-
mare which had been tormenting me only a moment
before, I pulled myself up to a sitting position and
shielded my eyes against the glare to look at her. The
trembling continued, and I stretched out my arms, but
Rheya pushed me away and hid her face.

“Rheya. . . ”

“Don’t talk to me!”

“Rheya, what’s the matter?”

I caught a glimpse of her tear-stained face, contorted
with emotion. The big childish tears streamed down her
face, glistened in the dimple above her chin and fell onto
the sheet.

“You don’t want me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I heard. . . ”

My jaw tightened: “Heard what? You don’t under-
stand. . . .”

“Yes I do. You said I wasn’t Rheya. You wanted me to

106

go, and I would, I really would . . . but I can’t. I don’t know
why. I’ve tried to go, but I couldn’t do it. I’m such a
coward.”

“Come on now ” I put my arms round her and held

her with all my strength. Nothing mattered to me except
her: everything else was meaningless. I kissed her hands,
talked, begged, excused myself and made promise after
promise, saying that she had been having some silly, terri-
ble dream. Gradually she grew calmer, and at last she
stopped crying and her eyes glazed, like a woman walking
in her sleep. She turned her face away from me.

“No,” she said at last, “be quiet, don’t talk like that. It’s
no good, you’re not the same person any more.” I started
to protest, but she went on: “No, you don’t want me. I
knew it before, but I pretended not to notice. I thought
perhaps I was imagining everything, but it was true . . .
you’ve changed. You’re not being honest with me. You
talk about dreams, but it was you who were dreaming, and
it was to do with me. You spoke my name as if it repelled
you. Why? Just tell me why.”

“Rheya, my little. . . .”

“I won’t have you talking to me like that, do you hear?
I won’t let you. I’m not your little anything, I’m not a child.
I’m ”

She burst into tears and buried her face in the pillow.
I got up. The ventilation hummed quietly. It was cold, and
I pulled a dressing-gown over my shoulders before sitting
next to her and taking her arm: “Listen to me, I’m going
to tell you something. I’m going to tell you the truth.”

She pushed herself upright again. I could see the veins
throbbing beneath the delicate skin of her neck. My jaw
tightened once more. The air seemed to be colder still,
and my head was completely empty.

“The truth?” she said. “Word of honor?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came.
‘Word of honor’ ... it was our special catch-phrase, our
old way of making an unconditional promise. Once these
words had been spoken, neither of us was permitted to lie,
or even to take refuge behind a half-truth. I remembered
the period when we used to torture each other in an exag-

107

gerated striving for sincerity, convinced that this ingenu-
ous honesty was the precondition of our relationship.

Word of honor, Rheya,” I answered gravely, and she
waited for me to continue. “You have changed too— we all
change. But that is not what I wanted to say. For some
reason that neither of us understands, it seems that . . .
you are forced to stay near me. And that’s fine with me,
because I can’t leave you either . . .”

No, Kris. The change is not in you,” Rheya whispered.
“It’s me. Something is wrong. Perhaps it has to do with
the accident?”

She looked at the dark, empty rectangle of the door.
The previous evening, I had removed the shattered re-
mains — a new one would have to be fitted. Another
thought struck me:

“Have you been managing to sleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have dreams ... I don’t know whether they really are
dreams. Perhaps I’m ill. I lie there and think, and . .

“What?”

“I have strange thoughts. I don’t know where they come
from.”

It took all my self-control to steady my voice and tell her
to go on, and I found myself tensing for her answer as if
for a blow in the face.

“They are thoughts . . .” She shook her head helplessly.

. . all around me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I get a feeling as if they were not from inside myself,
but somewhere further away. I can’t explain it, can’t put
words to it . . .”

I broke in almost involuntarily: “It must be some kind
of dream.” Then, back in control again: “And now, we put
the light out and we forget our problems until morning.
Tomorrow we can invent some new ones if you like. OK?”

She pressed the switch, and darkness fell between us.
Stretched out on the bed, I felt her warm breathing beside
me, and put my arms round her.

“Harder!” she whispered, and then, after a long pause:

108

“Kris!”

“What?”

“I love you.”

I almost screamed.

In the red morning, the sun’s swollen disc was rising
over the horizon.

An envelope lay in the doorway, and I tore it open. I
could hear Rheya humming to herself in the bath, and
from time to time she looked into the room and I would
see her face, half hidden by her wet hair.

I went to the window, and read:

“Kelvin, things are looking up. Sarlorius has decided that
it may be possible to use some form of energy to destabilize
the neutrino structure. He wants to examine some Phi
plasma in orbit. He suggests that you make a reconnais-
sance flight and take a certain quantity of plasma in the
capsule. It's up to you, but let me know what you decide.

I have no opinion. I feel as if I no longer have anything.

If I am more in favor of your going, it 's because we would
at least be making some show of progress. Otherwise, we
can only envy G.

Snow.

P.S. All I ask is for you to stay outside the cabin. You can
call me on the videophone. ”

I felt a stir of apprehension as I read the letter, and went
over it again carefully before tearing it up and throwing
the pieces into the disposal unit.

I went through the same terrible charade that I had
begun the previous day, and made up a story for Rheya’s
benefit. She did not notice the deception, and when I told
her that I had to make an inspection and suggested that
she come with me she was delighted. We stopped at the
kitchen for breakfast — Rheya ate very little — and then
made for the library.

Before venturing on the mission suggested by Sar-

109

torius, I wanted to glance through the literature dealing
with magnetic fields and neutrino structures. I did not yet
have any clear idea of how I would set about it, but I had
made up my mind to make an independent check on Sar-
torius’s activities. Not that I would prevent Snow and
Sartorius from ‘liberating’ themselves when the annihila-
tor was completed: I meant to take Rheya out of the Sta-
tion and wait for the conclusion of the operation in the
cabin of an aircraft. I set to work with the automatic li-
brarian. Sometimes it answered my queries by ejecting a
card with the laconic inscription “Not on file,” sometimes
it practically submerged me under such a spate of special-
ist physics textbooks that I hesitated to use its advice. Yet
I had no desire to leave the big circular chamber. I felt at
ease in my egg, among the rows of cabinets crammed with
tape and microfilm. Situated right at the center of the
Station, the library had no windows: It was the most iso-
lated area in the great steel shell, and made me feel
relaxed in spite of finding my researches held up.

Wandering across the vast room, I stopped at a set of
shelves as high as the ceiling, and holding about six hun-
dred volumes — all classics on the history of Solaris, start-
ing with the nine volumes of Giese’s monumental and
already relatively obsolescent monograph. Display for its
own sake was improbable in these surroundings. The col-
lection was a respectful tribute to the memory of the pio-
neers. I took down the massive volumes of Giese and sat
jeafing through them. Rheya had also located some read-
ing matter. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that she had
picked one of the many books brought out by the first
expedition, the Interplanetary Cookery Book, which could
have been the personal property of Giese himself. She was
poring over the recipes adapted to the arduous condi-
tions of interstellar flight. I said nothing, and returned to
the book resting on my knees. Solaris— Ten Years of Explora-
tion had appeared as volumes 4-12 of the Solariana collec-
tion whose most recent additions were numbered in the
thousands.

Giese was an unemotional man, but then in the study of
Solaris emotion is a hindrance to the explorer. Imagina-

110

tion and premature theorizing are positive disadvantages
in approaching a planet where — as has become clear —
anything is possible. It is almost certain that the unlikely
descriptions of the ‘plasmatic’ metamorphoses of the
ocean are faithful accounts of the phenomena observed,
although these descriptions are unverifiable, since the
ocean seldom repeats itself. The freakish character and
gigantic scale of these phenomena go too far outside the
experience of man to be grasped by anybody observing
them for the first time, and who would consider analogous
occurrences as ‘sports of nature,’ accidental manifesta-
tions of blind forces, if he saw them on a reduced scale,
say in a mud-volcano on Earth.

Genius and mediocrity alike are dumbfounded by the
teeming diversity of the oceanic formations of Solaris; no
man has ever become genuinely conversant with them.
Giese was by no means a mediocrity, but nor was he a
genius. He was a scholarly classifier, the type whose com-
pulsive application to their work utterly divorces them
from the pressures of everyday life. Giese devised a plain
descriptive terminology, supplemented by terms of his
own invention, and although these were inadequate, and
sometimes clumsy, it has to be admitted that no semantic
system is as yet available to illustrate the behavior of the
ocean. The ‘tree-mountains,’ ‘extensors,’ ‘fungoids,’ ‘mi-
moids,’ ‘symmetriads’ and ‘asymmetriads,’ ‘vertebrids’
and ‘agilus’ are artificial, linguistically awkward terms, but
they do give some impression of Solaris to anyone who
has only seen the planet in blurred photographs and in-
complete films. The fact is that in spite of his cautious
nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to
premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human
beings inevitably theorize. Giese, who thought himself
immune to temptation, decided that the ‘extensors’ came
into the category of basic forms. He compared them to
accumulations of gigantic waves, similar to the tidal
movements of our Terran oceans. In the first edition of
his work, we find them originally named as ‘tides.’ This
geocentrism might be considered amusing if it did not
underline the dilemma in which he found himself.

Ill

As soon as the question of comparisons with Earth
arises, it must be understood that the ‘extensors’ are for-
mations that dwarf the Grand Canyon, that they are pro-
duced in a substance which externally resembles a yeasty
colloid (during this fantastic ‘fermentation,’ the yeast sets
into festoons of starched open-work lace; some experts
refer to ‘ossified tumors’), and that deeper down the sub-
stance becomes increasingly resistant, like a tensed mus-
cle which fifty feet below the surface is as hard as rock but
retains its flexibility. The ‘extensor’ appears to be an inde-
pendent creation, stretching for miles between membra-
nous walls swollen with ‘ossified growths,’ like some
colossal python which after swallowing a mountain is
sluggishly digesting the meal, while a slow shudder occa-
sionally ripples along its creeping body. The ‘extensor’
only looks like a lethargic reptile from overhead. At close
quarters, when the two ‘canyon walls’ loom hundreds of
yards above the exploring aircraft, it can be seen that this
inflated cylinder, reaching from one side of the horizon to
the other, is bewilderingly alive with movement. First you
notice the continual rotating motion of a greyish-green,
oily sludge which reflects blinding sunlight, but skimming
just above the ‘back of the python’ (the ‘ravine’ sheltering
the extensor now resembles the sides of a geological
fault), you realize that the motion is in fact far more com-
plex, and consists of concentric fluctuations traversed by
darker currents. Occasionally this mantle turns into a
shining crust that reflects sky and clouds and then is rid-
dled by explosive eruptions of the internal gases and
fluids. The observer slowly realizes that he is looking at
the guiding forces that are thrusting outward and upward
the two gradually crystallizing gelatinous walls. Science
does not accept the obvious without further proof, how-
ever, and virulent controversies have reverberated down
the years on the key question of the exact sequence of
events in the interior of the ‘extensors’ that furrow the
vast living ocean in their millions.

Various organic functions have been ascribed to the
‘extensors.’ Some experts have argued that their purpose
is the transformation of matter; others suggested respira-

112

tory processes; still others claimed that they conveyed
alimentary materials. An infinite variety of hypotheses
now moulder in library basements, eliminated by ingeni-
ous, sometimes dangerous experiments. Today, the
scientists will go no further than to refer to the ‘extensors’
as relatively simple, stable formations whose duration is
measurable in weeks — an exceptional characteristic
among the recorded phenomena of the planet.

The ‘mimoid’ formations are considerably more com-
plex and bizarre, and elicit a more vehement response
from the observer, an instinctive response, I mean. It can
be stated without exaggeration that Giese fell in love with
the ‘mimoids’ and was soon devoting all his time to them.
For the rest of his life, he studied and described them and
brought all his ingenuity to bear on defining their nature.
The name he gave them indicates their most astonishing
characteristic, the imitation of objects, near or far, exter-
nal to the ocean itself.

Concealed at first beneath the ocean surface, a large
flattened disc appears, ragged, with a tar-like coating.
After a few hours, it begins to separate into flat sheets
which rise slowly. The observer now becomes a spectator
at what looks like a fight to the death, as massed ranks of
waves converge from all directions like contorted, fleshy
mouths which snap greedily around the tattered, flutter-
ing leaf, then plunge into the depths. As each ring of
waves breaks and sinks, the fall of this mass of hundreds
of thousands of tons is accompanied for an instant by a
viscous rumbling, an immense thunderclap. The tarry leaf
is overwhelmed, battered and torn apart; with every fresh
assault, circular fragments scatter and drift like feebly
fluttering wings below the ocean surface. They bunch into
pear-shaped clusters or long strings, merge and rise
again, and drag with them an undertow of coagulated
shreds of the base of the primal disc. The encircling waves
continue to break around the steadily expanding crater.
This phenomenon may persist for a day or linger on for
a month, and sometimes there are no further develop-
ments. The conscientious Giese dubbed this first varia-
tion a ‘stillbirth,’ convinced that each of these upheavals

113

aspired towards an ultimate condition, the ‘major mi-
moid,’ like a polyp colony (only covering an area greater
than a town) of pale outcroppings with the faculty of imi-
tating foreign bodies. Uyvens, on the other hand, saw this
final stage as constituting a degeneration or necrosis:
according to him, the appearance of the ‘copies’ corre-
sponded to a localized dissipation of the life energies of
the ocean, which was no longer in control of the original
forms it created.

Giese would not abandon his account of the various
phases of the process as a sustained progression towards
perfection, with a conviction which is particularly surpris-
ing coming from a man of such a moderate, cautious turn
of mind in advancing the most trivial hypothesis on the
other creations of the ocean. Normally he had all the bold-
ness of an ant crawling up a glacier.

Viewed from above, the mimoid resembles a town, an
illusion produced by our compulsion to superimpose
analogies with what we know. When the sky is clear, a
shimmering heat-haze covers the pliant structures of the
clustered polyps surmounted by membranous palisades.
The first cloud passing overhead wakens the mimoid. All
the outcrops suddenly sprout new shoots, then the mass
of polyps ejects a thick tegument which dilates, puffs out,
changes color and in the space of a few minutes has pro-
duced an astonishing imitation of the volutes of a cloud.
The enormous ‘object’ casts a reddish shadow over the
mimoid, whose peaks ripple and bend together, always in
the opposite direction to the movement of the real cloud.
I imagine that Giese would have been ready to give his
right hand to discover what made the mimoids behave in
this way, but these ‘isolated’ productions are nothing in
comparison to the frantic activity the mimoid displays
when ‘stimulated’ by objects of human origin.

The reproduction process embraces every object in-
side a radius of eight or nine miles. Usually the facsimile
is an enlargement of the original, whose forms are some-
times only roughly copied. The reproduction of ma-
chines, in particular, elicits simplifications that might be
considered grotesque — practically caricatures. The copy
is always modelled in the same colorless tegument, which

114

hovers above the outcrops, linked to its base by flimsy
umbilical cords; it slides, creeps, curls back on itself,
shrinks or swells and finally assumes the most com-
plicated forms. An aircraft, a net or a pole are all repro-
duced at the same speed. The mimoid is not stimulated
by human beings themselves, and in fact it does not react
to any living matter, and has never copied, for example,
the plants imported for experimental purposes. On the
other hand, it will readily reproduce a puppet or a doll, a
carving of a dog, or a tree sculpted in any material.

The observer must bear in mind that the ‘obedience’ of
the mimoid does not constitute evidence of cooperation,
since it is not consistent. The most highly-evolved mi-
moid has its off-days, when it ‘lives’ in slow-motion, or its
pulsation weakens. (This pulsation is invisible to the
naked eye, and was only discovered after close examina-
tion of rapid-motion film of the mimoid, which revealed
that each ‘beat’ took two hours.)

During these ‘off-days,’ it is easy to explore the mimoid,
especially if it is old, for the base anchored in the ocean,
like the protuberances growing out of it, is relatively
solid, and provides a firm footing for a man. It is equally
possible to remain inside the mimoid during periods of
activity, except that visibility is close to nil because of the
whitish colloidal dust continually emitted through tears in
the tegument above. In any case, at close range it is im-
possible to distinguish what forms the tegument is as-
suming, on account of their vast size — the smallest ‘copy’
is the size of a mountain. In addition, a thick layer of
colloidal snow quickly covers the base of the mimoid: this
spongy carpet takes several hours to solidify (the ‘frozen’
crust will take the weight of a man, though its composition
is much lighter than pumice stone). The problem is that
without special equipment there is a risk of being lost in
the maze of tangled structures and crevasses, sometimes
reminiscent of jumbled colonnades, sometimes of pe-
trified geysers. Even in daylight it is easy to lose one’s
direction, for the sun’s rays cannot pierce the white ceil-
ing ejected into the atmosphere by the ‘imitative explo-
sions.’

On gala days (for the scientist as well as for the mi-

115

moid), an unforgettable spectacle develops as the mimoid
goes into hyperproduction and performs wild flights of
fancy. It plays variations on the theme of a given object
and embroiders ‘formal extensions’ that amuse it for
hours on end, to the delight of the non-figurative artist
and the despair of the scientist, who is at a loss to grasp
any common theme in the performance. The mimoid can
produce ‘primitive’ simplifications, but is just as likely to
indulge in ‘baroque’ deviations, paroxysms of extrava-
gant brilliance. Old mimoids tend to manufacture ex-
tremely comic forms. Looking at the photographs, I have
never been moved to laughter; the riddle they set is too
disquieting to be funny.

During the early years of exploration, the scientists lit-
erally threw themselves upon the mimoids, which were
spoken of as open windows on the ocean and the best
opportunity to establish the hoped-for contact between
the two civilizations. They were soon forced to admit that
there was not the slightest prospect of communication,
and that the entire process began and ended with the
reproduction of forms. The mimoids were a dead end.

Giving way to the temptations of a latent anthropomor-
phism or zoomorphism, there were many schools of
thought which saw various other oceanic formations as
‘sensory organs,’ even as ‘limbs,’ which was how experts
like Maartens and Ekkonai classified Giese’s ‘vertebrids’
and ‘agilus’ for a time. Anyone who is rash enough to see
protuberances that reach as far as two miles into the at-
mosphere as limbs, might just as well claim that earth-
quakes are the gymnastics of the Earth’s crust!

Three hundred chapters of Giese catalogue the stand-
ard formations which occur on the surface of the living
ocean and which can be seen in dozens, even hundreds,
in the course of any day. The symmetriads — to continue
using the terminology and definitions of the Giese school
— are the least ‘human’ formations, which is to say that
they bear no resemblance whatsoever to anything on
Earth. By the time the symmetriads were being investi-
gated, it was already clear that the ocean was not aggres-
sive, and that its plasmatic eddies would not swallow any

116

but the most foolhardy explorer (of course I am not in-
cluding accidents resulting from mechanical failures). It
is possible to fly in complete safety from one part to an-
other of the cylindrical body of an extensor, or of the
vertebrids, Jacob’s ladders oscillating among the clouds:
the plasma retreats at the speed of sound in the planet’s
atmosphere to make way for any foreign body. Deep fun-
nels will open even beneath the surface of the ocean (at a
prodigious expenditure of energy, calculated by Scriabin
at around 10 19 ergs). Nevertheless, the first venture into
the interior of a symmetriad was undertaken with the ut-
most caution and discipline, and involved a host of what
turned out to be unnecessary safety measures. Every
schoolboy on Earth knows the names of these pioneers.

It is not their nightmare appearance that makes the
gigantic symmetriad formations dangerous, but the total
instability and capriciousness of their structure, in which
even the laws of physics do not hold. The theory that the
living ocean is endowed with intelligence has found its
firmest adherents among those scientists who have ven-
tured into their unpredictable depths.

The birth of a symmetriad comes like a sudden erup-
tion. About an hour beforehand, an area of tens of square
miles of ocean vitrifies and begins to shine. It remains
fluid, and there is no alteration in the rhythm of the waves.
Occasionally the phenomenon of vitrification occurs in
the neighbourhood of the funnel left by an agilus. The
gleaming sheath of the ocean heaves upwards to form a
vast ball that reflects sky, sun, clouds and the entire hori-
zon in a medley of changing, variegated images. Diff-
racted light creates a kaleidoscopic play of color.

The effects of light on a symmetriad are especially strik-
ing during the blue day and the red sunset. The planet
appears to be giving birth to a twin that increases in
volume from one moment to the next. The immense flam-
ing globe has scarcely reached its maximum expansion
above the ocean when it bursts at the summit and cracks
vertically. It is not breaking up; this is the second phase,
which goes under the clumsy name of the ‘floral calyx
phase’ and lasts only a few seconds. The membranous

117

arches soaring into the sky now fold inwards and merge
to produce a thick-set trunk enclosing a scene of teeming
activity. At the center of the trunk, which was explored for
the first time by the seventy-man Hamalei expedition, a
process of polycrystallization on a giant scale erects an
axis commonly referred to as the ‘backbone,’ a term
which I consider ill-chosen. The mind-bending architec-
ture of this central pillar is held in place by vertical shafts
of a gelatinous, almost liquid consistency, constantly
gushing upwards out of wide crevasses. Meanwhile, the
entire trunk is surrounded by a belt of snowy foam, seeth-
ing with great bubbles of gas, and the whole process is
accompanied by a perpetual dull roar of sound. From the
center towards the periphery, powerful buttresses spin
out and are coated with streams of ductile matter rising
out of the ocean depths. Simultaneously the gelatinous
geysers are converted into mobile columns that proceed
to extrude tendrils that reach out in clusters towards
points rigorously predetermined by the over-all dynamics
of the entire structure: they call to mind the gills of an
embryo, except that they are revolving at fantastic speed
and ooze trickles of pinkish ‘blood’ and a dark green
secretion.

The symmetriad now begins to display its most exotic
characteristic — the property of ‘illustrating,’ sometimes
contradicting, various laws of physics. (Bear in mind that
no two symmetriads are alike, and that the geometry of
each one is a unique ‘invention’ of the living ocean.) The
interior of the symmetriad becomes a factory for the pro-
duction of ‘monumental machines,’ as these constructs
are sometimes called, although they resemble no machine
which it is within the power of mankind to build: the desig-
nation is applied because all this activity has finite ends,
and is therefore in some sense ‘mechanical.’

When the geysers of oceanic matter have solidified into
pillars or into three-dimensional networks of galleries
and passages, and the ‘membranes’ are set into an inextri-
cable pattern of storeys, panels and vaults, the symmet-
riad justifies its name, for the entire structure is divided

118

into two segments each mirroring the other to the most
infinitesimal detail.

After twenty or thirty minutes, when the axis may have
tilted as much as eight to ten degrees from the horizontal,
the giant begins slowly to subside. (Symmetriads vary in
size, but as the base begins to submerge even the smallest
reach a height of half a mile, and are visible from miles
away.) At last, the structure stabilizes itself, and the partly
submerged symmetriad ceases its activity. It is now possi-
ble to explore it in complete safety by making an entry
near the summit, through one of the many syphons which
emerge from the dome. The completed symmetriad
represents a spatial analogue of some transcendental
equation.

It is a commonplace that any equation can be expressed
in the figurative language of non-Euclidean geometry and
represented in three dimensions. This interpretation re-
lates the symmetriad to Lobachevsky’s cones and Rie-
mann’s negative curves, although its unimaginable
complexity makes the relationship highly tenuous. The
eventual form occupies an area of several cubic miles and
extends far beyond our whole system of mathematics. In
addition, this extension is four-dimensional, for the fun-
damental terms of the equations use a temporal symbol-
ism expressed in the internal changes over a given
period.

It would be only natural, clearly, to suppose that the
symmetriad is a ‘computer’ of the living ocean, perform-
ing calculations for a purpose that we are not able to
grasp. This was Fremont’s theory, now generally dis-
counted. The hypothesis was a tempting one, but it
proved impossible to sustain the concept that the living
ocean examined problems of matter, the cosmos and
existence through the medium of titanic eruptions, in
which every particle had an indispensable function as a
controlled element in an analytical system of infinite
purity. In fact, numerous phenomena contradict this
over-simplified (some say childishly naive) concept.

Any number of attempts have been made to transpose

119

and ‘illustrate’ the symmetriad, and Averian’s demonstra-
tion was particularly well received. Let us imagine, he
said, an edifice dating from the great days of Babylon, but
built of some living, sensitive substance with the capacity
to evolve: the architectonics of this edifice passes through
a series of phases, and we see it adopt the forms of a
Greek, then of a Roman building. The columns sprout like
branches and become narrower, the roof grows lighter,
rises, curves, the arch describes an abrupt parabola then
breaks down into an arrow shape: the Gothic is born,
comes to maturity and gives way in time to new forms.
Austerity of line gives way to a riot of exploding lines and
shapes, and the Baroque runs wild. If the progression
continues — and the successive mutations are to be seen as
stages in the life of an evolving organism — we finally ar-
rive at the architecture of the space age, and perhaps too
at some understanding of the symmetriad.

Unfortunately, no matter how this demonstration may
be expanded and improved (there have been attempts to
visualize it with the aid of models and films), the compari-
son remains superficial. It is evasive and illusory, and
side-steps the central fact that the symmetriad is quite
unlike anything Earth has ever produced.

The human mind is only capable of absorbing a few
things at a time. We see what is taking place in front of us
in the here and now, and cannot envisage simultaneously
a succession of processes, no matter how integrated and
complementary. Our faculties of perception are conse-
quently limited even as regards fairly simple phenomena.
The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that
of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and
millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any
adequate sense of the word. The symmetriad is a million
— a billion, rather — raised to the power of N: it is incom-
prehensible. We pass through vast halls, each with a ca-
pacity of ten Kronecker units, and creep like so many ants
clinging to the folds of breathing vaults and craning to
watch the flight of soaring girders, opalescent in the glare
of searchlights, and elastic domes which criss-cross and
balance each other unerringly, the perfection of a mo-

120

ment, since everything here passes and fades. The es-
sence of this architecture is movement synchronized to-
wards a precise objective. We observe a fraction of the
process, like hearing the vibration of a single string in an
orchestra of supergiants. We know, but cannot grasp, that
above and below, beyond the limits of perception or
imagination, thousands and millions of simultaneous
transformations are at work, interlinked like a musical
score by mathematical counterpoint. It has been de-
scribed as a symphony in geometry, but we lack the ears
to hear it.

Only a long-distance view would reveal the entire pro-
cess, but the outer covering of the symmetriad conceals
the colossal inner matrix where creation is unceasing, the
created becomes the creator, and absolutely identical
‘twins’ are born at opposite poles, separated by towering
structures and miles of distance. The symphony creates
itself, and writes its own conclusion, which is terrible to
watch. Every observer feels like a spectator at a tragedy or
a public massacre, when after two or three hours — never
longer— the living ocean stages its assault. The polished
surface of the ocean swirls and crumples, the desiccated
foam liquefies again, begins to seethe, and legions of
waves pour inwards from every point of the horizon, their
gaping mouths far more massive than the greedy lips that
surround the embryonic mimoid. The submerged base of
the symmetriad is compressed, and the colossus rises as
if on the point of being shot out of the planet’s gravita-
tional pull. The upper layers of the ocean redouble their
activity, and the waves surge higher and higher to lick
against the sides of the symmetriad. They envelop it,
harden and plug the orifices, but their attack is nothing
compared to the scene in the interior. First the process of
creation freezes momentarily; then there is ‘panic.’ The
smooth interpenetration of moving forms and the har-
monious play of planes and lines accelerates, and the im-
pression is inescapable that the symmetriad is hurrying to
complete some task in the face of danger. The awe in-
spired by the metamorphosis and dynamics of the sym-
metriad intensifies as the proud sweep of the domes

121

falters, vaults sag and droop, and ‘wrong notes’ — incom-
plete, mangled forms — make their appearance. A power-
ful moaning roar issues from the invisible depths like a
sigh of agony, reverberates through the narrow funnels
and booms through the collapsing domes. In spite of the
growing destructive violence of these convulsions, the
spectator is rooted to the spot. Only the force of the
hurricane streaming out of the depths and howling
through the thousands of galleries keeps the great struc-
ture erect. Soon it subsides and starts to disintegrate.
There are final flutterings, contortions, and blind, ran-
dom spasms. Gnawed and undermined, the giant sinks
slowly and disappears, and the space where it stood is
covered with whirlpools of foam.

So what does all this mean?

I remembered an incident dating from my spell as as-
sistant to Gibarian. A group of schoolchildren visiting the
Solarist Institute in Aden were making their way through
the main hall of the library and looking at the racks of
microfilm that occupied the entire left-hand side of the
hall. The guide explained that among other phenomena
immortalized by the image, these contained fragmentary
glimpses of symmetriads long since vanished— -not single
shots, but whole reels, more than ninety thousand of
them!

One plump schoolgirl (she looked about fifteen, peer-
ing inquisitively over her spectacles) abruptly asked:
“And what is it for?”

In the ensuing embarrassed silence, the school mis-
tress was content to dart a reproving look at her wayward
pupil. Among the Solarists whose job was to act as guides
(I was one of them), no one would produce an answer.
Each symmetriad is unique, and the developments in its
heart are, generally speaking, unpredictable. Sometimes
there is no sound. Sometimes the index of refraction in-
creases or diminishes. Sometimes, rhythmic pulsations
are accompanied by local changes in gravitation, as if the
heart of the symmetriad were beating by gravitating.
Sometimes the compasses of the observers spin wildly,
and ionized layers spring up and disappear. The cata-

122

logue could go on indefinitely. In any case, even if we did
ever succeed in solving the riddle of the symmetriads, we
would still have to contend with the asymmetriadsl

The asymmetriads are born in the same manner as the
symmetriads but finish differently, and nothing can be
seen of their internal processes except tremors, vibra-
tions and flickering. We do know, however, that the in-
terior houses bewildering operations performed at a
speed that defies the laws of physics and which are dubbed
‘giant quantic phenomena.’ The mathematical analogy
with certain three-dimensional models of the atom is so
unstable and transitory that some commentators dismiss
the resemblance as of secondary importance, if not purely
accidental. The asymmetriads have a very short life-span
of fifteen to twenty minutes, and their death is even more
appalling than that of the symmetriads: with the howling
gale that screams through its fabric, a thick fluid gushes
out, gurgles hideously, and submerges everything
beneath a foul, bubbling foam. Then an explosion, coinci-
ding with a muddy eruption, hurls up a spout of debris
which rains slowly down into the seething ocean. This
debris is sometimes found scores of miles from the focus
of the explosion, dried up, yellow and flattened, like flakes
of cartilage.

Some other creations of the ocean, which are much
more rare and of very variable duration, part company
with the parent body entirely. The first traces of these
‘independents’ were identified — wrongly, it was later
proved — as the remains of creatures inhabiting the ocean
deeps. The free-ranging forms are often reminiscent of
many-winged birds, darting away from the moving trunks
of the agilus, but the preconceptions of Earth offer no
assistance in unravelling the mysteries of Solaris.
Strange, seal-like bodies appear now and then on the
rocky outcrop of an island, sprawling in the sun or drag-
ging themselves lazily back to merge with the ocean.

There was no escaping the impressions that grew out
of man’s experience on Earth. The prospects of Contact
receded.

Explorers travelled hundreds of miles in the depths of

123

symmetriads, and installed measuring instruments and
remote-control cameras. Artificial satellites captured the
birth of mimoids and extensors, and faithfully repro-
duced their images of growth and destruction. The librar-
ies overflowed, the archives grew, and the price paid for
all this documentation was often very heavy. One notori-
ous disaster cost one hundred and six people their lives,
among them Giese himself: while studying what was un-
doubtedly a symmetriad, the expedition was suddenly de-
stroyed by a process peculiar to the asymmetriads. In two
seconds, an eruption of glutinous mud swallowed up sev-
enty-nine men and all their equipment. Another twenty-
seven observers surveying the area from aircraft and
helicopters were also caught in the eruption.

Following the Eruption of the Hundred and Six, and for
the first time in Solarist studies, there were petitions de-
manding a thermo-nuclear attack on the ocean. Such a
response would have been more cruelty than revenge,
since it would have meant destroying what we did not
understand. Tsanken’s ultimatum, which was never offi-
cially acknowledged, probably influenced the negative
outcome of the vote. He was in command of Giese’s re-
serve team, and had survived owing to a transmission
error that took him off his course, to arrive in the disaster
area a few minutes after the explosion, when the black
mushroom cloud was still visible. Informed of the pro-
posal for a nuclear strike, he threatened to blow up the
Station, together with the nineteen survivors sheltering
inside it.

Today, there are only three of us in the Station. Its
construction was controlled by satellites, and was a tech-
nical feat on which the human race has a right to pride
itself, even if the ocean builds far more impressive struc-
tures in the space of a few seconds. The Station is a disc
of one hundred yards radius, and contains four decks at
the center and two at the circumference. It is maintained
at a height of from five to fifteen hundred yards above the
ocean by gravitors programmed to compensate for the
ocean’s owm field of attraction. In addition to all the ma-
chines available to ordinary Stations and the large artifi-

124

cial satellites that orbit other planets, the Solaris Station
is equipped with specialized radar apparatus sensitive to
the smallest fluctuations of the ocean surface, which trips
auxiliary power-circuits capable of thrusting the steel disc
into the stratosphere at the first indication of new plas-
matic upheavals.

But today, in spite of the presence of our faithful
‘visitors,’ the Station was strangely deserted. Ever since
the robots had been locked away in the lower-deck store-
rooms— for a reason I had still not discovered— it had
been possible to walk around without meeting a single
member of the crew of our ghost ship.

As I replaced the ninth volume of Giese on the shelf, the
plastic-coated steel floor seemed to shudder under my
feet. I stood still, but the vibration had stopped. The li-
brary was completely isolated from the other rooms, and
the only possible source of vibration must be a shuttle
leaving the Station. This thought jerked me back to real-
ity. I had not yet decided to accept Sartorius’s suggestion
and leave the Station. By feigning approval of his plan, I
had been more or less postponing the outbreak of hostili-
ties, for I was determined to save Rheya. All the same,
Sartorius might have some chance of success. He cer-
tainly had the advantage of being a qualified physicist,
while I was in the ironic position of having to count on the
superiority of the ocean. I pored over microfilm texts for
an hour, and made myself wrestle with the unfamiliar lan-
guage of neutrino physics. The undertaking seemed
hopeless at first: there were no less than five current theo-
ries dealing with neutrino fields, an obvious indication
that none was definitive. Eventually I struck promising
ground, and was busily copying down equations when
there was a knock at the door. I got up quickly and opened
it a few inches, to see Snow’s perspiring face, and behind
him an empty corridor.

“Yes, it’s me.” His voice was hoarse, and there were
dark pouches under the bloodshot eyes. He wore an anti-
radiation apron of shiny rubber, and the same worn old
trousers held up by elastic braces.

Snow’s gaze flickered round the circular chamber and

125

alighted on Rheya where she stood by an armchair at the
other end. Then it returned to me, and I lowered my
eyelids imperceptibly. He nodded, and I spoke casually:

‘‘Rheya, come and meet Dr. Snow . . . Snow — my wife.”

“I . . . I’m just a minor member of the crew. Don’t get
about much. . . ” He faltered, but managed to blurt out:

That s why I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you
before. . . ”

Rheya smiled and held out her hand, which he shook in
some surprise. He blinked several times and stood look-
ing at her, tongue-tied, until I took him by the arm.

Excuse me, he said to Rheya. “I wanted a word with
you, Kelvin. . . ”

“Of course.” (My composure was an ugly charade, but
what else could I do?) “Take no notice of us, Rheya. We’ll
be talking shop. . . ”

I guided Snow over to the chairs on the far side of the
room, and Rheya sat in the armchair I had occupied ear-
lier, swivelling it so that she could glance up at us from
her book. I lowered my voice:

“Any news?”

“I’m divorced,” he whispered. If anybody had quoted
this to me as the opening of a conversation a few days
before, I would have burst out laughing, but the Station
had blunted my sense of humor. “It feels like years since
yesterday morning,” he went on. “And you?”

“Nothing.” I was at a loss for words. I liked Snow, but
I distrusted him, or rather I distrusted the purpose of his
visit.

“Nothing? Surely ...”

“What?” I pretended not to understand.

Eyes half shut, he leaned so close to me that I could feel
his breath on my face:

“This business has all of us confused, Kelvin. I can’t
make contact with Sartorius. All I know is what I wrote to
you, which is what he told me after our little confer-
ence. . . ”

“Has he disconnected his videophone?”

“No, there’s been a short-circuit at his end. He could
have done it on purpose, but there’s also. . . ” He clenched

126

his fist and mimed somebody aiming a punch, curling his
lips in an unpleasant grin. “Kelvin, I came here to. . . What
do you intend doing?”

“You want my answer to your letter. All right, I’ll go on
the trip, there’s no reason for me to refuse. I’ve only been
getting ready. . . ”

“No,” he interrupted. “It isn’t that.”

“What then? Go on.”

“Sartorius thinks he may be on the right track,” Snow
muttered. His eyes never left me, and I had to stay still and
try to look casual. “It all started with that X-ray experi-
ment that he and Gibarian arranged, you remember. That
could have produced some alteration. . . ”

“What kind of alteration?”

“They beamed the rays directly into the ocean. The
intensity was only modulated according to a pre-set pro-
gram.”

“I know. It’s already been done by Nilin and a lot of
others.”

“Yes, but the others worked on low power. This time
they used everything we had.”

“That could lead to trouble. . . violating the four-power
convention, and the United Nations. . . ”

“Come on, Kelvin, you know as well as I do that it
doesn’t matter now. Gibarian is dead.”

“So Sartorius makes him the scapegoat?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about that. Sartorius
is intrigued by the visiting hours. They only come as we
wake up, which suggests that the ocean is especially inter-
ested in our sleeping hours, and that that is when it locates
its patterns. Sartorius wants to send our waking selves —
our conscious thoughts. You see?”

“By mail?”

“Keep the jokes to yourself. The idea is to modulate the
X-rays by hooking in an electro-encephalograph taken
from one of us.”

“Ah!” Light was beginning to dawn. “And that one of
us is me?”

“Yes, Sartorius had you in mind.”

“Tell him I’m flattered.”

127

“Will you do it?”

I hesitated. Snow darted a look at Rheya, who seemed
absorbed in her book. I felt my face turn pale.

“Well?”

“The idea of using X-rays to preach sermons on the
greatness of mankind seems absolutely ridiculous to me.
Don’t you think so?”

“You mean it?”

“Yes.”

“Right,” he said, smiling as if I had fallen in with some
idea of his own, “then you’re opposed to the plan?”

His expression told me that he had somehow been a
step ahead of me all the time.

“Okay,” he went on. “There is a second plan — to con-
struct a Roche apparatus.”

“An annihilator?”

“Yes. Sartorius has already made the preliminary calcu-
lations. It is feasible, and it won’t even require any great
expenditure of energy. The apparatus will generate a
negative field twenty-four hours a day, and for an unlim-
ited period.”

“And its effect?”

“Simple. It will be a negative neutrino field. Ordinary
matter will not be affected at all. Only the. . . neutrino
structures will be destroyed. You see?”

Snow gave me a satisfied grin. I stood stock-still and
gaping, so that he stopped smiling, looked at me with a
frown, and waited a moment before speaking:

“We abandon the first plan then, the ‘Brainwave’ plan?
Sartorius is working on the other one right now. We’ll call
it ‘Project Liberation.’ ”

I had to make a quick decision. Snow was no physicist,
and Sartorius’s videophone was disconnected or
smashed. I took the chance:

“I’d rather call the second idea ‘Operation Slaughter-
house.’ ”

“And you ought to know! Don’t tell me you haven’t had
so . me . P ract i ce lately. Only there’ll be a radical difference
this time — no more visitors, no more Phi creatures — they

128

will disintegrate as soon as they appear.”

I nodded, and managed what I hoped was a convincing
smile:

“You haven’t got the point. Morality is one thing, but
self-preservation. . . I just don’t want to get us all killed.
Snow.”

He stared back at me suspiciously, as I showed him my
scribbled equations:

“I’ve been working along the same lines. Don’t look so
surprised. The neutrino theory was my idea in the first
place, remember? Look. Negative fields can be generated
all right. And ordinary matter is unaffected. But what hap-
pens to the energy that maintains the neutrino structure
when it disintegrates? There must be a considerable re-
lease of that energy. Assuming a kilogram of ordinary
matter represents 10 8 ergs, for a Phi creation we get 5 7
multiplied by 10 8 . That means the equivalent of a small
atomic bomb exploding inside the Station.”

“You mean to tell me Sartorius won’t have been over
all this?”

It was my turn to grin maliciously:

“Not necessarily. Sartorius follows the Frazer-Cajolla
school. Their theories would indicate that the energy po-
tential would be given off in the form of light — powerful,
yes, but not destructive. But that isn’t the only theory of
neutrino fields. According to Cayatte, and Avalov, and
Sion, the radiation-spectrum would be much broader. At
its maximum, there would be a strong burst of gamma
radiation. Sartorius has faith in his tutors. I don’t say we
can’t respect that, but there are other tutors, and other
theories. And another thing, Snow,” — I could see him
beginning to waver — “we have to bear in mind the ocean
itself! It is bound to have used the optimum means of
designing its creations. It seems to me that we can’t afford
to back Sartorius against the ocean as well as the other
theories.”

“Give me that paper, Kelvin.”

I passed it to him, and he poured over my equations.

“What’s this?” He pointed to a line of calculations.

129

“That? The transformation tensor of the magnetic
field.”

“Give it here.”

“Why?” (I already knew his reply.)

“I’ll have to show Sartorius.”

“If you say so,” I shrugged. “You’re welcome to it,
naturally, provided you realize that these theories have
never been tested experimentally: neutrino structures
have been abstractions until now. Sartorius is relying on
Frazier, and I’ve followed Sion’s theory. He’ll say I’m no
physicist, or Sion either, not from his point of view, at
least. He will dispute my figures, and I’m not going to get
into the kind of argument where he tries to browbeat me
for his own satisfaction. You, I can convince. I couldn’t
begin to convince Sartorius, and I have no intention of
trying.”

“Then what do you want to do? He’s already started
work. . . ”

All his earlier animation had subsided, and he spoke in
a monotone. I did not know if he trusted me, and I did not
much care:

“What do I want to do? Whatever a man does when his
life is in danger.”

“I’ll try to contact him. Maybe he can develop some
kind of safety device. . . And then there’s the first plan.
Would you cooperate? Sartorius would agree, I’m sure of
it. At least it’s worth a try.”

“You think so?”

“No,” he snapped back. “But what have we got to
lose?”

I was in no hurry to accept. It was time that I needed,
and Snow could help me to prolong the delay:

“I’ll think about it.”

“Okay, I’m going.” His bones creaked as he got up.
“We’ll have to begin with the encephalogram,” he said,
rubbing at his overall as if to get rid of some invisible
stain.

Without a word to Rheya, he walked to the door, and
after it had closed behind him I got up and crumpled the
sheet of paper in my hand. I had not falsified the equa-

130

tions, but I doubted whether Sion would have agreed with
my extensions of his theory. I started abruptly, as Rheya’s
hand touched my shoulder.

“Kris, who is he?”

“I told you. Dr. Snow.”

“What’s he like?”

“I don’t know him very well . . . why?”

“He was giving me such a strange look.”

“So you’re an attractive woman. . . .”

“No, this was a different sort of look ... as if. . . .” She
trembled, looked up at me momentarily, then lowered her
eyes. “Let’s go back to the cabin.”

131

The Liquid Oxygen

I have no idea how long I had been lying in the dark,
staring at the luminous dial of my wristwatch. Hearing
myself breathing, I felt a vague surprise, but my underly-
ing feeling was one of profound indifference both to this
ring of phosphorescent figures and to my own surprise.
I told myself that the feeling was caused by fatigue. When
I turned over, the bed seemed wider than usual. I held my
breath; no sound broke the silence. Rheya’s breathing
should have been audible. I reached out, but felt nothing.
I was alone.

I was about to call her name, when I heard the tread of
heavy footsteps coming towards me. A numb calm de-
scended:

“Gibarian?”

“Yes, it’s me. Don’t switch the light on.”

“No?”

“There’s no need, and it’s better for us to stay in the
dark.”

“But you are dead . . .”

“Don’t let that worry you. You recognize my voice,
don’t you?”

“Yes. Why did you kill yourself?”

“I had no choice. You arrived four days late. If you had
come earlier, I would not have been forced to kill myself.

132

Don’t worry about it, though, I don’t regret anything.”

“You really are there? I’m not asleep?”

“Oh, you think you’re dreaming about me? As you did
with Rheya?”

“Where is she?”

“How should I know?”

“I have a feeling that you do.”

“Keep your feelings for yourself. Let’s say I’m deputiz-
ing for her.”

“I want her here too!”

“Not possible.”

“Why not? You know very well that it isn’t the real you,
just my . . .”

“No, I am the real Gibarian— just a new incarnation.
But let’s not waste time on useless chatter.”

“You’ll be leaving again?”

“Yes.”

“And then she’ll come back?”

“Why should you care about that?”

“She belongs to me.”

“You are afraid of her.”

“No.”

“She disgusts you.”

“What do you want with me?”

“Save your pity for yourself— you have a right to it — but
not for her. She will always be twenty years old. You must
know that.”

I felt suddenly at ease again, for no apparent reason,
and ready to hear him out. He seemed to have come
closer, though I could not see him in the dark.

“What do you want?”

“Sartorius has convinced Snow that you have been de-
ceiving him. Right now they are trying to give you the
same treatment. Building the X-ray beamer is a cover for
constructing a magnetic field disruptor.”

“Where is she?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I came to warn you.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Be careful. You must find some kind of
weapon. You can’t trust anyone.”

133

“I can trust Rheya.”

He stifled a laugh: “Of course, you can trust Rheya — to
some extent. And you can always follow my example, if all
else fails.”

“You are not Gibarian.”

“No? Then who am I? A dream?”

“No, you are only a puppet. But you don’t realize that
you are.”

“And how do you know what you are?”

I tried to stand up, but could not stir. Although
Gibarian was still speaking, I could not understand his
words; there was only the drone of his voice. I struggled
to regain control of my body, felt a sudden wrench and
... I woke up, and drew down great gulps of air. It was
dark, and I had been having a nightmare. And now I heard
a distant, monotonous voice: “. . . a dilemma that we are
not equipped to solve. We are the cause of our own suffer-
ings. The polytheres behave strictly as a kind of amplifier
of our own thoughts. Any attempt to understand the moti-
vation of these occurrences is blocked by our own an-
thropomorphism. Where there are no men, there cannot
be motives accessible to men. Before we can proceed with
our research, either our own thoughts or their material-
ized forms must be destroyed. It is not within our power
to destroy our thoughts. As for destroying their material
forms, that could be like committing murder.”

I had recognized Gibarian’s voice at once. When I
stretched out my arm, I found myself alone. I had fallen
asleep again. This was another dream. I called Gibarian’s
name, and the voice stopped in mid-sentence. There was
the sound of a faint gasp, then a gust of air.

“Well, Gibarian,” I yawned, “you seem to be following
me out of one dream and into the next . . .”

There was a rustling sound from somewhere close, and
I called his name again. The bed-springs creaked, and a
voice whispered in my ear:

“Kris . . . it’s me . . .”

“Rheya? Is it you? What about Gibarian?”

“But . . . you said he was dead, Kris.”

“He can be alive in a dream,” I told her dejectedly,

134

although I was not completely sure that it had been a
dream. “He spoke to me ... He was here . .

My head sank back onto the pillow. Rheya said some-
thing, but I was already drifting into sleep.

In the red light of morning, the events of the previous
night returned. I had dreamt that I was talking to
Gibarian. But afterwards, I could swear that I had heard
his voice, although I had no clear recall of what he had
said, and it had not been a conversation — more like a
speech.

Rheya was splashing about in the bathroom. I looked
under the bed, where I had hidden the tape-recorder a few
days earlier. It was no longer there.

“Rheya!” She put her face round the door. “Did you see
a tape-recorder under the bed, a little pocket one?”

“There was a pile of stuff under the bed. I put it all over
there.” She pointed to a shelf by the medicine cabinet,
and disappeared back into the bathroom.

There was no tape-recorder on the shelf, and when
Rheya emerged from the bathroom I asked her to think
again. She sat combing her hair, and did not answer. It
was not until now that I noticed how pale she was, and how
closely she was watching me in the mirror. I returned to
the attack:

“The tape-recorder is missing, Rheya.”

“Is that all you have to tell me?”

“I’m sorry. You’re right, it’s silly to get so worked up
about a tape-recorder.”

Anything to avoid a quarrel.

Later, over breakfast, the change in Rheya’s behavior
was obvious, yet I could not define it. She did not meet my
eyes, and was frequently so lost in thought that she did not
hear me. Once, when she looked up, her cheeks were
damp.

“Is anything the matter? You’re crying.”

“Leave me alone,” Rheya blurted. “They aren’t real
tears.”

Perhaps I ought not to have let her answer so, but
‘straight talking’ was the last thing I wanted. In any case,
I had other problems on my mind; I had dreamt that Snow

135

and Sartorius were plotting against me, and although I
was certain that it had been nothing more than a dream,
I was wondering if there was anything in the Station that
I might be able to use to defend myself. My thinking had
not progressed to the point of deciding what to do with
a weapon once I had it. I told Rheya that I had to make an
inspection of the store-rooms, and she trailed behind me
silently.

I ransacked packing-cases and capsules, and when we
reached the lower deck I was unable to resist looking into
the cold store. Not wanting Rheya to go in, I put my head
inside the door and looked around. The recumbent figure
was still covered by its dark shroud, but from my position
in the doorway I could not make out whether the black
woman was still sleeping by Gibarian’s body. I had the
impression that she was no longer there.

I wandered from one store-room to another, unable to
locate anything that might serve as a weapon, and with a
rising feeling of depression. All at once I noticed that
Rheya was not with me. Then she reappeared; she had
been hanging back in the corridor. In spite of the pain she
suffered when she could not see me, she had been trying
to keep away. I should have been astonished: instead, I
went on acting as if I had been offended— but then, who
had offended me? — and sulking like a child.

My head was throbbing, and I rifled the entire contents
of the medicine-cabinet without finding so much as an
aspirin. I did not want to go back to the sick bay. I did not
want to do anything. I had never been in a blacker temper.
Rheya tiptoed about the cabin like a shadow. Now and
then she went off somewhere. I don’t know where, I
was paying her no attention; then she would creep back in-
side.

That afternoon, in the kitchen (we had just eaten, but
in fact Rheya had not touched her food, and I had not
attempted to persuade her), Rheya got up and came to sit
next to me. I felt her hand on my sleeve, and grunted:
“What’s the matter?”

I had been meaning to go up to the deck above, as the
pipes were carrying the sharp crackling sound of high-

136

voltage apparatus in use, but Rheya would have had to
come with me. It had been hard enough to justify her
presence in the library; among the machinery, there was
a chance that Snow might drop some clumsy remark. I
gave up the idea of going to investigate.

“Kris,” she whispered, “what’s happening to us?”

I gave an involuntary sigh of frustration with everything
that had been happening since the previous night: “Ev-
erything is fine. Why?”

“I want to talk.”

“All right, I’m listening.”

“Not like this.”

“What? You know I have a head-ache, and that’s not the
least of my worries . . .”

“You’re not being fair.”

I forced myself to smile; it must have been a poor imita-
tion: “Go ahead and talk, darling, please.”

“Will you tell me the truth?”

“Why should I lie?” This was an ominous beginning.

“You might have your reasons ... it might be necessary
. . . But if you want . . . Look, I am going to tell you
something, and then it will be your turn — only no half-
truths. Promise!” I could not meet her gaze. “I’ve already
told you that I don’t know how I came to be here. Perhaps
you do. Wait! — perhaps you don’t. But if you do know, and
you can’t tell me now, will you tell me one day, later on?
I couldn’t be any the worse for it, and you would at least
be giving me a chance.”

“What are you talking about, child,” I stammered.
“What chance?”

“Kris, whatever I may be, I’m certainly not a child. You
promised me an answer.”

Whatever I may be . . . my throat tightened, and I stared
at Rheya shaking my head like an imbecile, as if forbid-
ding myself to hear any more.

“I’m not asking for explanations. You only need to tell
me that you are not allowed to say.”

“I’m not hiding anything,” I croaked.

“All right.”

She stood up. I wanted to say something. We could not

137

leave it at that. But no words would come.

“Rheya . . .”

She was standing at the window, with her back turned.
The blue-black ocean stretched out under a cloudless sky.

“Rheya, if you believe ... You know very well I love
you . . .”

“Me?”

I went to put my arms round her, but she pulled away.

“You’re too kind,” she said. “You say you love me? I’d
rather you beat me.”

“Rheya, darling!”

“No, no, don’t say any more.”

She went back to the table and began to clear away the
plates. I gazed out at the ocean. The sun was setting, and
the Station cast a lengthening shadow that danced on the
waves. Rheya dropped a plate on the floor. Water splashed
in the sink. A tarnished golden halo ringed the horizon.
If I only knew what to do ... if only . . . Suddenly there
was silence. Rheya was standing behind me.

“No, don’t turn round,” she murmured. “It isn’t your
fault, I know. Don’t torment yourself.”

I reached out, but she slipped away to the far side of the
room and picked up a stack of plates: “It’s a shame they’re
unbreakable. I’d like to smash them, all of them.”

I thought for a moment that she really was going to
dash them to the floor, but she looked across at me and
smiled: “Don’t worry. I’m not going to make scenes.”

In the middle of the night, I was suddenly wide awake.
The room was in darkness and the door was ajar, with a
faint light shining from the corridor. There was a shrill
hissing noise, interspersed with heavy, muffled thudding,
as if some heavy object was pounding against a wall. A
meteor had pierced the shell of the Station! No, not a
meteor, a shuttle, for I could hear a dreadful labored
whining. . . .

I shook myself. It was not a meteor, nor was it a shuttle.
The sound was coming from somebody at the end of the
corridor. I ran down to where light was pouring from the
door of the little work-room, and rushed inside. A freez-
ing vapor filled the room, my breath fell like snow, and

138

white flakes swirled over a body covered by a dressing-
gown, stirring feebly then striking the floor again. I could
hardly see through the freezing mist. I snatched her up
and folded her in my arms, and the dressing-gown burnt
my skin. Rheya kept on making the same harsh gasping
sound as I stumbled along the corridor, no longer feeling
the cold, only her breath on my neck, burning like fire.

I lowered Rheya onto the operating-table and pulled the
dressing-gown open. Her face was contorted with pain,
the lips covered by a thick, black layer of frozen blood, the
tongue a mass of sparkling ice crystals.

Liquid oxygen . . . The Dewar bottles in the workroom
contained liquid oxygen. Splinters of glass had crunched
underfoot as I carried Rheya out. How much of it had she
swallowed? It didn’t matter. Her trachea, throat and lungs
must be burnt away — liquid oxygen corrodes flesh more
effectively than strong acids. Her breathing was more and
more labored, with a dry sound like tearing paper. Her
eyes were closed. She was dying.

I looked across at the big, glass-fronted cabinets,
crammed with instruments and drugs. Tracheotomy? In-
tubation? She had no lungs! I stared at shelves full of
colored bottles and cartons. She went on gasping
hoarsely, and a wisp of vapor drifted out of her open
mouth.

Thermophores . . .

I started looking for them, then changed my mind, ran
to another cupboard and turned out boxes of ampoules.
Now a hypodermic — where are they? — here — needs ste-
rilizing. I fumbled with the lid of the sterilizer, but my
numb fingers had lost all sensation and would not bend.

The harsh rattle grew louder, and Rheya’s eyes were
open when I reached the table. I opened my mouth to say
her name but my voice had gone and my lips would not
obey me. My face did not belong to me; it was a plaster
mask.

Rheya’s ribs were heaving under the white skin. The
ice-crystals had melted and her wet hair was entangled in
the headrest. And she was looking at me.

“Rheya!” It was all I could say. I stood paralyzed, my

139

hands dangling uselessly, until a burning sensation
mounted from my legs and attacked my lips and eyelids.

A drop of blood melted and slanted down her cheek.
Her tongue quivered and receded. The labored panting
went on.

I could feel no pulse in her wrist, and put my ear against
her frozen breast. Faintly, behind the raging blizzard, her
heart was beating so fast that I could not count the beats,
and I remained crouched over her, with my eyes closed.
Something brushed my head— Rheya’s hand in my hair. I
stood up.

“Kris!” A harsh gasp.

I took her hand, and the answering pressure made my
bones creak. Then her face screwed up with agony, and
she lost consciousness again. Her eyes turned up, a gut-
tural rattle tore at her throat, and her body arched with
convulsions. It was all I could do to keep her on the opera-
ting table; she broke free and her head cracked against a
porcelain basin. I dragged her back, and struggled to hold
her down, but violent spasms kept jerking her out of my
grasp. I was pouring with sweat, and my legs were like
jelly. When the convulsions abated, I tried to make her lie
flat, but her chest thrust out to gulp at the air. Suddenly
her eyes were staring out at me from behind the frightful
blood-stained mask of her face.

“Kris . . . how long . . . how long?”

She choked. Pink foam appeared at her mouth, and the
convulsions racked her again. With my last reserves of
strength I bore down on her shoulders, and she fell back.
Her teeth chattered loudly.

“No, no, no,” she wimpered suddenly, and I thought
that death was near.

But the spasms resumed, and again I had to hold her
down. Now and then she swallowed drily, and her ribs
heaved. Then the eyelids half closed over the unseeing
eyes, and she stiffened. This must be the end. I did not
even try to wipe the foam from her mouth. A distant
ringing throbbed in my head. I was waiting for her final
breath before my strength failed and I collapsed to the
ground.

She went on breathing, and the rasp was now only a

140

light sigh. Her chest, which had stopped heaving, moved
again to the rapid rhythm of her heartbeat. Color was
returning to her cheeks. Still I did not realize what was
happening. My hands were clammy, and I heard as if
through layers of cotton wool, yet the ringing sound con-
tinued.

Rheya’s eye-lids moved, and our eyes met.

I could not speak her name from behind the mask of my
face. All I could do was look at her.

She turned her head and looked round the room.
Somewhere behind me, in another world, a tap dripped.
Rheya levered herself up on her elbow. I recoiled, and
again our eyes met.

“It ... it didn’t work,” she stammered. “Why are you
looking at me like that?” Then she screamed out loud:
“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Still I could say nothing. She examined her hands,
moved her fingers . . .

“Is this me?”

My lips formed her name, and she repeated it as a
question — “Rheya?”

She let herself slide off the operating table, staggered,
regained her balance and took a few steps. She was mov-
ing in a daze, and looking at me without appearing to see
me.

“Rheya? But ... I am not Rheya. Who am I then? And
you, what about you?” Her eyes widened and sparkled,
and an astonished smile lit up her face. “And you, Kris.
Perhaps you too . . .”

I had backed away until I came up against the wall. The
smile vanished.

“No. You are afraid. I can’t take any more of this, I can’t
. . . I didn’t know, I still don’t understand. It’s not possi-
ble.” Her clenched fists struck her chest. “What else could
I think, except that I was Rheya! Maybe you believe this is
all an act? It isn’t, I swear it isn’t.”

Something snapped in my mind, and I went to put my
arms round her, but she fought free:

“Don’t touch me! Leave me alone! I disgust you, I know
I do. Keep away! I’m not Rheya . . .”

We screamed at each other and Rheya tried to keep me

141

at arms’ length. I would not let her go, and at last she let
her head fall to my shoulder. We were on our knees,
breathless and exhausted.

“Kris . . . what do I have to do to put a stop to this?”

“Be quiet!”

“You don’t know!” She lifted her head and stared at
me. “It can’t be done, can it?”

“Please . .

“I really tried . . . No, go away. I disgust you — and
myself, I disgust myself. If I only knew how . .

“You would kill yourself.”

“Yes.”

“But I want you to stay alive. I want you here, more than
anything.”

“You’re lying.”

“Tell me what I have to do to convince you. You are
here. You exist. I can’t see any further than that.”

“It can’t possibly be true, because I am not Rheya.”

“Then who are you?”

There was a long silence. Then she bowed her head and
murmured:

“Rheya . . . But I know that I am not the woman you once
loved.”

“Yes. But that was a long time ago. That past does not
exist, but you do, here and now. Don’t you see?”

She shook her head:

“I know that it was kindness that made you behave as
you did, but there is nothing to be done. That first morn-
ing when I found myself waiting by your bed for you to
wake up, I knew nothing. I can hardly believe it was only
three days ago. I behaved like a lunatic. Everything was
misty. I didn’t remember anything, wasn’t surprised by
anything. It was like recovering from a drugged sleep, or
a long illness. It even occurred to me that I might have
been ill and you didn’t want to tell me. Then a few things
happened to set me thinking — you know what I mean. So
after you met that man in the library and you refused to
tell me anything, I made up my mind to listen to that tape.
That was the only time I have lied to you, Kris. When you
were looking for the tape-recorder, I knew where it was.

142

I’d hidden it. The man who recorded the tape — what was
his name?”

“Gibarian.”

“Yes, Gibarian — he explained everything. Although I
still don’t understand. The only thing missing was that I
can’t . . . that there is no end. He didn’t mention that, or
if he did it was after you woke up and I had to switch off.
But I heard enough to realize that I am not a human being,
only an instrument.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s what I am. To study your reactions — something
of that sort. Each one of you has a ... an instrument like
me. We emerge from your memory or your imagination,
I can’t say exactly — anyway you know better than I. He
talks about such terrible things ... so far fetched ... if
it did not fit in with everything else I would certainly have
refused to believe him.”

“The rest?”

“Oh, things like not needing sleep, and being com-
pelled to go wherever you go. When I think that only
yesterday I was miserable because I thought you detested
me. How stupid! But how could I have imagined the truth?
He — Gibarian — didn’t hate that woman, the one who
came to him, but he refers to her in such a dreadful way.
It wasn’t until then that I realized that I was helpless what-
ever I did, and that I couldn’t avoid torturing you. More
than that though, an instrument of torture is passive, like
the stone that falls on somebody and kills them. But an
instrument of torture which loves you and wishes you
nothing but good — it was too much for me. I wanted
to tell you the little that I had understood. I told myself
that it might be useful to you. I even tried to make
notes. . . .”

“That time when you had the light switched on?”

“Yes. But I couldn’t write anything. I searched myself

for . . . you know, some sign of ‘influence’ I was going

mad. I felt as if there was no body underneath my skin and
there was something else instead: as if I was just an illu-
sion meant to mislead you. You see?”

“I see.”

143

“When you can’t sleep at night and your mind keeps
spinning for hours on end, it can take you far away; you
find yourself moving in strange directions . .

“I know what you mean.”

“But I could feel my heart beating. And then I remem-
bered that you had made an analysis of my blood. What
did you find? You can tell me the truth now.”

“Your blood is like my own.”

“Truly?”

“I give you my word.”

“What does that indicate? I had been telling myself that
the . . . unknown force might be concealed somewhere
inside me, and that it might not occupy very much space.
But I did not know whereabouts it was. I think now that
I was evading the real issue because I didn’t have the
nerve to make a decision. I was afraid, and I looked for a
way out. But Kris, if my blood is like yours ... if I really
. . . no, it’s impossible. I would already be dead, wouldn’t
I? That means there really is something different — but
where? In the mind? Yet it seems to me that I think as any
human being does . . and I know nothing! If that alien
thing was thinking in my head, I would know everything.
And I would not love you. I would be pretending, and
aware that I was pretending. Kris, you’ve got to tell me
everything you know. Perhaps we could work out a solu-
tion between us.”

“What kind of solution?” She fell silent. “Is it death you
want?”

“Yes, I think it is.”

Again silence. Rheya sat on the floor, her knees drawn
up under her chin. I looked around at the white-enamelled
fittings and gleaming instruments, perhaps looking for
some unsuspected clue to suddenly materialize.

“Rheya, I have something to say, too.” She waited qui-
etly. “It is true that we are not exactly alike. But there is
nothing wrong with that. In any case, whatever else we
might think about it, that . . . difference . . . saved your
life.”

A painful smile flickered over her face: “Does that mean
that lam... immortal?”

144

“I don’t know. At any rate, you’re far less vulnerable
than I am.”

“It’s horrible ”

“Perhaps not as horrible as you think.”

“But you don’t envy me.”

“Rheya, I don’t know what your fate will be. It cannot
be predicted, any more than my own or any other mem-
bers’ of the Station’s personnel. The experiment will go
on, and anything can happen . .

“Or nothing.”

“Or nothing. And I have to confess that nothing is what
I would prefer. Not because I’m frightened — though fear
is undeniably an element of this business — but because
there can’t be any final outcome. I’m quite sure of that.”

“Outcome? You mean the ocean?”

“Yes, contact with the ocean. As I see it, the problem
is basically very simple. Contact means the exchange of
specific knowledge, ideas, or at least of findings, definite
facts. But what if no exchange is possible? If an elephant
is not a giant microbe, the ocean is not a giant brain.
Obviously there can be various approaches, and the
consequence of one of them is that you are here, now, with
me. And I am trying my hardest to make you realize that
I love you. Just your being here cancels out the twelve
years of my life that went into the study of Solaris, and I
want to keep you.

“You may have been sent to torment me, or to make my
life happier, or as an instrument ignorant of its function,
used like a microscope with me on the slide. Possibly you
are here as a token of friendship, or a subtle punishment,
or even as a joke. It could be all of those at once, or —
which is more probable — something else completely. If
you say that our future depends on the ocean’s intentions,
I can’t deny it. I can’t tell the future any more than you can.
I can’t even swear that I shall always love you. After what
has happened already, we can expect anything. Suppose
tomorrow it turns me into a green jellyfish! It’s out of our
hands. But the decision we make today is in our hands.
Let’s decide to stay together. What do you say?”

“Listen Kris, there’s something else I must ask you

145

. . . Am I ... do I look very like her?”

“You did at first. Now I don’t know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Now all I see is you.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. If you really were her, I might not be able to love
you.”

“Why?”

“Because of what I did.”

“Did you treat her badly?”

“Yes, when we . . .”

“Don’t say any more.”

“Why not?”

“So that you won’t forget that I am the one who is here,
not her.”

146

Conversation

The following morning, I received another note from
Snow: Sartorius had left off working on the disruptor and
was getting ready for a final experiment with high-power
X-rays.

“Rheya, darling, I have to pay a visit to Snow.”

The red dawn blazing through the window divided the
room in two. We were in an area of blue shadow. Every-
thing outside this shadow-zone was burnished copper: if
a book had fallen from a shelf, my ear would have listened
instinctively for a metallic clang.

“It’s to do with the experiment. Only I don’t know what
to do about it. Please understand, I’d rather . . .”

“You needn’t justify yourself, Kris. If only it doesn’t go
on too long.”

It s bound to take a while. Look, do you think you
could wait in the corridor?”

“I can try. But what if I lose control?”

“What does it feel like? I’m not asking just out of curi-
osity, believe me, but if we can discuss how it works you
might find some way of keeping it in check.”

Rheya had turned pale, but she tried to explain:

I feel afraid, not of some thing or some person —
there’s no focus, only a sense of being lost. And I am
terribly ashamed of myself. Then, when you come back,

147

it stops. That’s what made me think I might have been ill.”

‘‘Perhaps it’s only inside this damned Station that it
works. I’ll make arrangements for us to get out as soon
as possible.”

‘‘Do you think you can?”

“Why not? I’m not a prisoner here. I’ll have to talk it
over with Snow. Have you any idea how long you could
manage to remain by yourself?”

“That depends ... If I could hear your voice, I think I
might be able to hold out.”

“I’d rather you weren’t listening. Not that I have any-
thing to hide, but there’s no telling what Snow might say.”

“You needn’t go on. I understand. I’ll just stand close
enough to hear the sound of your voice.”

“I’m going to the operating room to phone him. The
doors will be open.”

Rheya nodded agreement.

I crossed the red zone. The corridor seemed dark by
contrast, in spite of the lighting. Inside the open door of
the operating room, fragments of the Dewar bottle, the
last traces of the previous night’s events, gleamed from
under a row of liquid oxygen containers. When I took the
phone off the hook, the little screen lit up, and I tapped
out the number of the radio cabin. Behind the dull glass,
a spot of bluish light grew, burst, and Snow was looking
at me, perched on the edge of his chair.

“I got your note and I want to talk to you. Can I come
over?”

“Yes. Right away?”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me, but are you coming alone or . . . accom-
panied?”

“Alone.”

His creased forehead and thin, tanned face filled the
screen as he leant forward to scrutinize me through the
convex glass. Then he appeared to reach an abrupt deci-
sion:

“Fine, fine, I’ll be expecting you.”

I went back to the cabin, where I could barely make out
the shape of Rheya behind the curtain of red sunlight. She

148

was sitting in an armchair, with her hands clutching the
armrests. She must have failed to hear my footsteps, and
I saw her for a moment fighting the inexplicable compul-
sion that possessed her and wrestling with the fierce con-
tractions of her entire body which stopped immediately
she saw me. I choked back a feeling of blind rage and pity.

We walked in silence down the long corridor with its
polychromed walls; the designers had intended the varia-
tions in color to make life more tolerable inside the ar-
mored shell of the Station. A shaft of red light ahead of
us meant that the door of the radio cabin was ajar, and I
looked at Rheya. She made no attempt to return my smile,
totally absorbed in her preparations for the coming battle
with herself. Now that the ordeal was about to begin, her
face was pinched and white. Fifteen paces from the door,
she stopped, pushing me forward gently with her finger-
tips as I started to turn around. Suddenly I felt that Snow,
the experiment, even the Station itself were not worth the
agonizing price that Rheya was ready to pay, with myself
as assistant torturer. I would have retraced my steps, but
a shadow fell across the cabin doorway, and I hurried
inside.

Snow stood facing me with the red sun behind him
making a halo of purple light out of his grey hair. We
confronted one another without speaking, and he was
able to examine me at his leisure in the sunlight that
dazzled me so that I could hardly see him.

I walked past him and leaned against a tall desk bris-
tling with microphones on their flexible stalks. Snow pi-
voted slowly and went on staring at me with his habitual
cheerless smile, in which there was no amusement, only
overpowering fatigue. Still with his eyes on mine, he
picked his way through the piles of objects littered about
the cabin — thermic cells, instruments, spare parts for the
electronic equipment — pulled a stool up against the door
of a steel cabinet, and sat down.

I listened anxiously, but no sound came from the corri-
dor. Why did Snow not speak? The prolonged silence was
becoming exasperating.

I cleared my throat:

149

“When will you and Sartorius be ready?”

“We can start today, but the recording will take some
time.”

“Recording? You mean the encephalogram?”

“Yes, you agreed. Is anything wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

Another lengthening silence. Snow broke it:

“Did you have something to tell me?”

“She knows,” I whispered.

He frowned, but I had the impression that he was not
really surprised. Then why pretend? I lost all desire to
confide in him. All the same, I had to be honest:

“She started to suspect after our meeting in the library.
My behavior, various other indications. Then she found
Gibarian’s tape-recorder and played back the tape.”

Snow sat intent and unmoving. Standing by the desk,
my view of the corridor was blocked by the half-open
door. I lowered my voice again:

“Last night, while I was asleep, she tried to kill herself.
She drank liquid oxygen . . .” There was a sound of rus-
tling, like papers stirred by the wind. I stopped and lis-
tened for something in the corridor, but the noise did not
come from there. A mouse in the cabin? Out of the ques-
tion, this was Solaris. I stole a glance at Snow.

“Go on,” he said calmly.

“It didn’t work, of course. Anyway, she knows who she

is.”

'“Why tell me?”

I was taken aback for an instant, then I stammered out:

“So as to inform you, to keep you up to date on the
situation . . .”

“I warned you.”

“You mean you knew?” My voice rose involuntarily.

“What you have just told me? Of course not. But I
explained deposition. When it arrives, the visitor is al-
most blank — only a ghost made up of memories and
vague images dredged out of its . . . source. The longer
it stays with you, the more human it becomes. It also
becomes more independent, up to a certain point. And

150

the longer that goes on, the more difficult it gets . .
Snow broke off, looked me up and down, and went on
reluctantly: “Does she know everything?”

“Yes, I’ve just told you.”

“Everything? Does she know that she came once
before, and that you . .

“No!”

“Listen Kelvin,” he smiled ruefully, “if that’s how it is,
what do you want to do — leave the Station?”

“Yes.”

“With her?”

“Yes.”

The silence while he considered his reply also revealed
something else. Again, from somewhere close, and with-
out being able to pin it down, I heard the same faint
rustling in the cabin, as if through a thin partition.

Snow shifted on his stool.

“All right. Why look at me like that? Do you think I
would stand in your way? You can do as you like, Kelvin.
We’re in enough trouble already without putting pressure
on each other. I know it will be a hopeless job to convince
you, but there’s something I have to say: you are doing all
you can to stay human in an inhuman situation. Noble it
may be, but it isn’t going to get you anywhere. And I’m
not so sure about it being noble — not if it’s idiotic at the
same time. But that’s your affair. Let’s get back to the
point. You renege on the experiment and take her away
with you. Has it struck you that you’ll only be embarking
on a different kind of experiment?”

“What do you mean? If you want to know whether she
can manage it, as long as I’m with her, I don’t see ...” I
trailed to a halt.

Snow sighed:

“All of us have our heads in the sand, Kelvin, and we
know it. There’s no need to put on airs.”

“I’m not putting anything on.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to offend you. I take back the
airs, but I still think that you are playing the ostrich game
— and a particularly dangerous version. You deceive

151

yourself, you deceive her, and you chase your own tail. Do
you know the necessary conditions for stabilizing a neu-
trino field?”

“No, and nor do you. Nor does anyone.”

“Exactly. All we know is that the structure is inherently
unstable, and can only be maintained by means of a con-
tinuous energy input. Sartorius told me that. This energy
creates a rotating stabilization field. Now, does that en-
ergy come from outside the ‘visitor,’ or is it generated
internally? You see the difference?”

“Yes. If it is external, she . . .”

Snow finished the sentence for me:

“Away from Solaris, the structure disintegrates. It’s
only a theory, of course, but one that you can verify, since
you have already set up an experiment. The vehicle you
launched is still in orbit. In my spare moments, I’ve even
calculated its trajectory. You can take off, intercept, and
find out what happened to the passenger . .

“You’re out of your mind,” I yelled.

“You think so? And what if we brought the shuttle down
again? No problem — it’s on remote control. We’ll bring
it out of orbit, and . .

“Shut up!”

“That won’t do either? There’s another method, a very
simple one. It doesn’t involve bringing the shuttle down,
only establishing radio contact. If she’s alive, she’ll reply,
and ...” P 7

“The oxygen would have run out days ago.”

“She may not need it. Shall we try?”

“Snow . . . Snow . . .”

He mimicked my intonation angrily:

“Kelvin . . . Kelvin . . . Think, just a little. Are you a man
or not? Who are you trying to please? Who do you want
to save? Yourself? Her? And which version of her? This
one or that one? Haven’t you got the guts to face them
both? Surely you realize that you haven’t thought it
through. Let me tell you one last time, we are in a situation
that is beyond morality.”

The rustling noise returned, and this time it sounded
like nails scraping on a wall. All at once I was filled with

152

a dull indifference. I saw myself, I saw both of us, from a
long way off, as if through the wrong end of a telescope,
and everything looked meaningless, trivial, and slightly
ridiculous.

“So what do you suggest? Send up another shuttle? She
would be back tomorrow. And the day after, and the day
after that. How long do you want it to go on? What’s the
good of disposing of her if she keeps returning? How
would it help me, or you, or Sartorius, or the Station?”

“No, here’s my suggestion: leave with her. You’ll
witness the transformation. After a few minutes, you’ll
see . . .”

“What? A monster, a demon?”

“No, you’ll see her die, that’s all. Don’t think that they
are immortal — I promise you that they die. And then what
will you do? Come back . . . for a fresh sample?” He stared
at me with bantering condescension.

“That’s enough!” I burst out, clenching my fists.

“Oh, I’m the one who has to be quiet? Look, I didn’t
start this conversation, and as far as I’m concerned it has
gone on long enough. Let me just suggest some ways for
you to amuse yourself. You could scourge the ocean with
rods, for instance. You’ve got it into your head that you’re
a traitor if you . . .” He waved his hand in farewell, and
raised his head as if to watch an imaginary ship in flight.

. . and a good man if you keep her. Smiling when you
feel like screaming, and shamming cheerful when you
want to beat your head against a wall, isn’t that being a
traitor? What if it is not possible, here, to be anything but
a traitor? What will you do? Take it out on that bastard
Snow, who is the cause of it all? In that case, Kelvin, you
just put the lid on the rest of your troubles by acting like
a complete idiot!”

“You are talking from your own point of view. I love
this girl.”

“Her memory, you mean?”

“No, herself. I told you what she tried to do. How many
‘real’ human beings would have that much courage?”

“So you admit . . .”

“Don’t quibble.”

153

“Right. So she loves you. And you want to love her. It
isn’t the same thing.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m sorry, Kelvin, but it was your idea to spill all this.
You don’t love her. You do love her. She is willing to give
her life. So are you. It’s touching, it’s magnificent, any-
thing you like, but it’s out of place here — it’s the wrong
setting. Don’t you see? No, you don’t want to. You are
going around in circles to satisfy the curiosity of a power
we don’t understand and can’t control, and she is an as-
pect, a periodic manifestation of that power. If she was
. . . if you were being pestered by some infatuated hag, you
wouldn’t think twice about packing her off, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well then, that probably explains why she is not a hag!
You feel as if your hands are tied? That’s just it, they are!”

“All you are doing is adding one more theory to the
millions of theories in the library. Leave me alone Snow,
she is . . . No, I won’t say any more.”

“It’s up to you. But remember that she is a mirror that
reflects a part of your mind. If she is beautiful, it’s because
your memories are. You provide the formula. You can
only finish where you started, don’t forget that.”

“What do you expect me to do? Send her away? I’ve
already asked you why, and you don’t answer.”

“I’ll give you an answer. It was you who wanted this
conversation, not me. I haven’t meddled with your affairs,
and I’m not telling you what to do or what not to do. Even
if I had the right, I would not. You come here of your own
free will, and you dump it all on me. You know why? To
take the weight off your own back. Well I’ve experienced
that weight — don’t try to shut me up — and I leave you free
to find your own solution. But you want opposition. If I
got in your way, you could fight me, something tangible,
a man just like you, with the same flesh and blood. Fight
me, and you could feel that you too were a man. When I
don’t give you the excuse to fight, you quarrel with me, or
rather with yourself. The one thing you’ve left out is tell-
ing me you’d die of grief if she suddenly disappeared
. . . No, please, I’ve heard enough!”

154

I countered clumsily:

“I came to tell you, because I thought you ought to
know, that I intend leaving the Station with her.”

“Still on the same tack,” Snow shrugged. “I only off-
ered my opinion because I realized that you were losing
touch with reality. And the further you go, the harder you
fall. Can you come and see Sartorius around nine tomor-
row morning?”

“Sartorius? I thought he wasn’t letting anybody in. You
told me you couldn’t even phone him.”

“He seems to have reached some kind of settlement.
We never discuss our domestic troubles. With you, it’s
another matter. Will you come tomorrow morning?”

“All right,” I grunted.

I noticed that Snow had slipped his left hand inside the
cabinet. How long had the door been ajar? Probably for
some time, but in the heat of the encounter I had not
registered that the position of his hand was not natural.
It was as if he was concealing something — or holding
somebody’s hand.

I licked my lips:

“Snow, what have you . . .”

“You’d better leave now,” he said evenly.

I closed the door in the final glow of the red twilight.
Rheya was huddled against the wall a few paces down the
corridor. She sprang to her feet a * once:

“You see? I did it Kris. I feel so much better . . . Perhaps
it will be easier and easier . . .”

“Yes, of course ...” I answered absently.

We went back to my quarters. I was still speculating
about that cabinet, and what had been hiding there, per-
haps overhearing our entire conversation. My cheeks
started to burn so hard that I involuntarily passed the back
of my hand over them. What an idiotic meeting! And
where did it get us? Nowhere. But there was tomorrow
morning . . .

An abrupt thrill of fear ran through me. My encephalo-
gram, a complete record of the workings of my brain, was
to be beamed into the ocean in the form of radiation.
What was it Snow had said — would I suffer terribly if

155

Rheya departed? An encephalogram records every mental
process, conscious and unconscious. If I want her to
disappear, will it happen? But if I wanted to get rid of her
would I also be appalled at the thought of her imminent
destruction? Am I responsible for my unconscious? No
one else is, if not myself. How stupid to agree to let them
do it. Obviously I can examine the recording before it is
used, but I won’t be able to decode it. Nobody could. The
experts can only identify general mental tendencies. For
instance, they will say that the subject is thinking about
some mathematical problem, but they are unable to spec-
ify its precise terms. They claim that they have to stick to
generalizations because the encephalogram cannot dis-
criminate among the stream of simultaneous impulses,
only some of which have any psychological “counterpart,”
and they refuse point-blank to hazard any comment on the
unconscious processes. So how could they be expected to
decipher memories which have been more or less re-
pressed?

Then why was I so afraid? I had told Rheya only that
morning that the experiment could not work. If Terran
neurophysiologists were incapable of decoding the re-
cording, what chance was there for that great alien crea-
ture . . . ?

Yet it had infiltrated my mind without my knowledge,
surveyed my memory, and laid bare my most vulnerable
point. That was undeniable. Without any assistance or
radiation transmissions, it had found its way through the
armored shell of the Station, located me, and come away
with its spoils . . .

“Kris?” Rheya whispered.

Standing at the window with unseeing eyes, I had not
noticed the coming of darkness. A thin ceiling of high
cloud glowed a dim silver in the light of the vanished sun,
and obscured the stars.

If she disappears after the experiment, that will mean
that I wanted her to disappear — that I killed her. No, I will
not see Sartorius. They can’t force me to cooperate. But
I can’t tell them the truth, I’ll have to dissemble and lie,
and keep on doing it . . . Because there may be thoughts,

156

intentions and cruel hopes in my mind of which I know
nothing, because I am a murderer unawares. Man has
gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations
without having explored his own labyrinth of dark pas-
sages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies
behind doorways that he himself has sealed. Was I to
abandon Rheya there out of false shame, or because I
lacked the courage?

“Kris,” said Rheya, more softly still.

She was standing quite close to me now. I pretended
not to hear. At that moment, I wanted to isolate myself.
I had not yet resolved anything, or reached any decision.
I stood motionless, looking at the dark sky and the cold
stars, pale ghosts of the stars that shone on Earth. My
mind was a blank. All I had was the grim certainty of
having crossed some point of no return. I refused to ad-
mit that I was travelling towards what I could not reach.
Apathy robbed me of the strength even to despise myself.

157

The Thinkers

“Kris, is it the experiment that’s on your mind?”

The sound of her voice made me start with surprise. I
had been lying in the dark for hours with my eyes open,
unable to sleep. Not hearing Rheya’s breathing, I had
forgotten her, letting myself drift in a tide of aimless
speculation. The waking dream had lured me out of sight
of the measure and meaning of reality.

“How did you know I wasn’t asleep?”

“Your breathing changes when you are asleep,” she
said gently, as if to apologize for her question. “I didn’t
want to interfere ... If you can’t answer, don’t.”

“Why would I not tell you? Anyway you’ve guessed
right, it is the experiment.”

“What do they expect to achieve?”

“They don’t know themselves. Something. Anything. It
isn t ‘Operation Brainwave,’ it’s ‘Operation Desperation.’
Really, one of us ought to have the courage to call the
experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the
decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of cour-
age would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a
retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surren-
der for mankind — as if there was any dignity in flounder-
ing and drowning in what we don’t understand and never
will.” I stopped, but a new access of rage quickly built up.

158

“Needless to say they’re not short of arguments. They
claim that even if we fail to establish contact we won’t have
been wasting our time investigating the plasma, and that
we shall eventually uncover the secret of matter. They
know very well that they are deceiving themselves. It’s like
wandering about in a library where all the books are writ-
ten in an indecipherable language. The only thing that’s
familiar is the color of the bindings!”

“Are there no other planets like this?”

“It’s possible. This is the only one we’ve come across.
In any case, it’s in an extremely rare category, not like
Earth. Earth is a common type — the grass of the universel
And we pride ourselves on this universality. There’s no-
where we can’t go; in that belief we set out for other
worlds, all brimming with confidence. And what were we
going to do with them? Rule them or be ruled by them:
that was the only idea in our pathetic minds! What a use-
less waste. .

I got out of bed and fumbled in the medicine cabinet.
My fingers recognized the shape of the big bottle of sleep-
ing pills, and I turned around in the darkness:

“I’m going to sleep darling.” Up in the ceiling, the
ventilator hummed. “I must get some sleep . .

In the morning, I woke up feeling calm and refreshed.
The experiment seemed a petty matter, and I could not
understand how I had managed to take the encephalo-
gram so seriously. Nor was I much bothered by having to
bring Rheya into the laboratory. In spite of all her exer-
tions, she could not bear to stay out of sight and earshot
for longer than five minutes, so I had abandoned my idea
of further tests (she was even prepared to let herself be
locked up somewhere), asked her to come with me, and
advised her to bring something to read.

I was especially curious about what I would find in the
laboratory. There was nothing unusual about the appear-
ance of the big, blue and white-painted room, except that
the shelves and cupboards meant to contain glass instru-
ments seemed bare. The glass panel in one door was
starred, and in some doors it was missing altogether,
suggesting that there had been a struggle here recently,

159

and that someone had done his best to remove the traces.

Snow busied himself with the equipment, and behaved
quite civilly, showing no surprise at the sight of Rheya,
and greeting her with a quick nod of the head.

I was lying down, and Snow was swabbing my temples
and forehead with saline solution, when a narrow door
opened and Sartorius emerged from an unlighted room.
He was wearing a white smock and a black anti-radiation
overall that came down to his ankles, and his greeting was
authoritative and very professional in manner. We might
have been two researchers in some great institute on
Earth, continuing from where we had left off the day
before. He was not wearing his dark glasses, but I noticed
that he had on contact lenses, which I took to be the
explanation of his lack of expression.

Sartorius looked on with arms folded as Snow attached
the electrodes and wrapped a bandage around my head.
He looked around the room several times, ignoring
Rheya, who sat on a stool with her back against the wall,
pretending to read.

Snow stepped back, and I moved my head, which was
bulging with metal discs and wires, to watch him switch
on. At this point Sartorius raised his hand and launched
into a flowery speech:

“Dr. Kelvin, may I have your attention and concentra-
tion for a moment. I do not intend to dictate any precise
sequence of thought to you, for that would invalidate the
experiment, but I do insist that you cease thinking of
yourself, of me, our colleague Snow, or anybody else.
Make an effort to eliminate any intrusion of individual
personalities, and concentrate on the matter in hand.
Earth and Solaris; the body of scientists considered as a
single entity, although generations succeed each other
and man as an individual has a limited span; our aspira-
tions, and our perseverance in the attempt to establish an
intellectual contact; the long historic march of humanity,
our own certitude of furthering that advance, and our
determination to renounce all personal feelings in order
to accomplish our mission; the sacrifices that we are pre-
pared to make, and the hardships we stand ready to over-

160

come . . . These are the themes that might properly oc-
cupy your awareness. The association of ideas does not
depend entirely on your own will. However, the very fact
of your presence here bears out the authenticity of the
progression I have drawn to your attention. If you are
unsure that you have acquitted yourself of your task, say
so, I beg you, and our colleague Snow will make another
recording. We have plenty of time.”

A dry little smile flickered over his face as he spoke
these last words, but his expression remained morose. I
was still trying to unravel the pompous phraseology which
he had spun out with the utmost gravity.

Snow broke the lengthening silence:

“Ready Kris?”

He was leaning with one elbow on the control panel of
the electro-encephalograph, looking completely relaxed.
His confident tone reassured me, and I was grateful to
him for calling me by my first name.

“Let’s get started.” I closed my eyes.

A sudden panic had overwhelmed me after Snow had
fixed the electrodes and walked over to the controls: now
it disappeared just as suddenly. Through half-closed lids,
I could see the red lights winking on the black control-
panel. I was no longer aware of the damp, unpleasant
touch of the crown of clammy electrodes. My mind was an
empty grey arena ringed by a crowd of invisible onlookers
massed on tiers of seats, attentive, silent, and emanating
in their silence an ironic contempt for Sartorius and the
Mission. What should I improvise for these spectators?
. . . Rheya ... I introduced her name cautiously, ready to
withdraw it at once, but no protest came, and I kept going.
I was drunk with grief and tenderness, ready to suffer
prolonged sacrifices patiently. My mind was pervaded
with Rheya, without a body or a face, but alive inside me,
real and imperceptible. Suddenly, as if printed over that
despairing presence, I saw in the grey shadow the learned,
professorial face of Giese, the father of Solarist studies
and of Solarists. I was not visualizing the nauseating mud-
eruption which had swallowed up the gold-rimmed spec-
tacles and carefully brushed moustache. I was seeing the

161

engraving on the title-page of his classic work, and the
close-hatched strokes against which the artist had made
his head stand out — so like my father’s, that head, not in
its features but in its expression of old-fashioned wisdom
and honesty, that I was finally no longer able to tell which
of them was looking at me, my father or Giese. They were
dead, and neither of them buried, but then deaths without
burial are not uncommon in our time.

The image of Giese vanished, and I momentarily forgot
the Station, the experiment, Rheya and the ocean. Recent
memories were obliterated by the overwhelming convic-
tion that these two men, my father and Giese, nothing but
ashes now, had once faced up to the totality of their exist-
ence, and this conviction afforded a profound calm which
annihilated the formless assembly clustered around the
grey arena in the expectation of my defeat.

I heard the click of circuit-breakers, and light pene-
trated my eyelids, which blinked open. Sartorius had not
budged from his previous position, and was looking at
me. Snow had his back turned to operate the control-
panel. I had the impression that he was amusing himself
by making his sandals slap on the floor.

“Do you think that stage one has been successful, Dr.
Kelvin?” Sartorius inquired, in the nasal voice which I had
come to detest.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?” he persisted, obviously rather sur-
prised, and perhaps even suspicious.

“Yes.”

My assurance and the bluntness of my answers made
him lose his composure briefly.

“Oh . . . good,” he stammered.

Snow came over to me and started to unwrap the band-
age from my head. Sartorius stepped back, hesitated, then
disappeared into the dark-room.

I was rubbing the circulation back into my legs when he
came out again, holding the developed film. Zigzag lines
traced a lacy pattern along fifty feet of glistening black
ribbon. My presence was no longer necessary, but I
stayed, and Snow fed the ribbon into the modulator. Sar-

162

torius made a final suspicious examination of the last few
feet of the spool, as if trying to decipher the content of the
wavering lines.

The experiment proceeded with a minimum of fuss.
Snow and Sartorius each sat at a bank of controls and
pushed buttons. Through the reinforced floor, I heard the
whine of power building up in the turbines. Lights moved
downward inside glass-fronted indicators in time with the
descent of the great X-ray beamer to the bottom of its
housing. They came to a stop at the low limit of the indica-
tors.

Snow stepped up the power, and the white needle of the
voltmeter described a left-to-right semicircle. The hum of
current was barely audible now, as the film unwound, in-
visible behind the two round caps. Numbers clicked
through the footage indicator.

I went over to Rheya, who was watching us over her
book. She glanced up at me inquiringly. The experiment
was over, and Sartorius was walking towards the heavy
conical head of the machine.

“Can we go?” Rheya mouthed silently.

I replied with a nod, Rheya stood up, and we left the
room without taking leave of my colleagues.

A superb sunset was blazing through the windows of
the upper-deck corridor. Usually the horizon was reddish
and gloomy at this hour. This time it was a shimmering
pink, laced with silver. Under the soft glow of the light, the
somber foothills of the ocean shone pale violet. The sky
was red only at the zenith.

We came to the bottom of the stairway, and I stopped,
reluctant to wall myself up again in the prison cell of the
cabin.

“Rheya, I want to look something up in the library. Do
you mind?”

“Of course not,” she exclaimed, in a forced attempt at
cheerfulness. “I can find myself something to read. . . ”

I knew only too well that a gulf had opened between us
since the previous day. I should have behaved more con-
siderately, and tried to master my apathy, but I could not
summon the strength.

163

We walked down the ramp leading to the library. There
were three doors giving onto the little entrance hall, and
crystal globes containing flowers were spaced out along
the walls. I opened the middle door, which was lined with
synthetic leather on either side. I always avoided contact
with this upholstery when entering the library. We were
greeted by a pleasant gust of fresh air. In spite of the
stylized sun painted on the ceiling, the great circular hall
had remained cool.

Idly running a finger along the spines of the books, I
was on the point of choosing, out of all the Solarist clas-
sics, the first volume of Giese, so as to refresh my memory
of the portrait on the title-page, when I came upon a book
I had not noticed before, an octavo volume with a cracked
binding. It was Gravinsky’s Compendium, used mostly by
students, as a crib.

Sitting in an armchair, with Rheya at my side, I leafed
through Gravinsky ’s alphabetical classification of the vari-
ous Solarist theories. The compiler, who had never set
foot on Solaris, had combed through every monograph,
expedition report, fragmentary outline and provisional
account, even making excerpts of incidental comments
about Solaris in planetological works dealing with other
worlds. He had drawn up an inventory crammed with sim-
plistic formulations, which grossly diminished the sub-
tlety of the ideas it resumed. Originally intended as an
all-embracing account, Gravinsky’s book was little more
than a curiosity now. It had only been published twenty
years before, but since that time such a mass of new theo-
ries had accumulated that there would not have been
room for them in a single volume. I glanced through the
index — practically an obituary list, for few of the authors
cited were still alive, and among the survivors none was
still playing an active part in Solarist studies. Reading all
these names, and adding up the sum of the intellectual
efforts they represented in every field of research, it was
tempting to think that surely one of the theories quoted
must be correct, and that the thousands of listed hypothe-
ses must each contain some grain of truth, could not be
totally unrelated to the reality.

164

In his introduction, Gravinsky divided the first sixty
years of Solarist studies into periods. During the initial
period, which began with the scouting ship that studied
the planet from orbit, nobody had produced theories in
the strict sense. ‘Common sense’ suggested that the
ocean was a lifeless chemical conglomerate, a gelatinous
mass which through its ‘quasi-volcanic’ activity produced
marvellous creations and stabilized its eccentric orbit by
virtue of a self-generated mechanical process, as a pen-
dulum keeps itself on a fixed path once it is set in motion.
To be precise, Magenon had come up with the idea that
the ‘colloidal machine’ was alive three years after the first
expedition, but according to the Compendium the period of
biological hypotheses does not begin until nine years
later, when Magenon’s idea had acquired numerous sup-
porters. The following years teemed with theoretical ac-
counts of the living ocean, extremely complex, and
supported by biomathematical analysis. During the third
period, scientific opinion, hitherto practically unanimous,
became divided.

What followed was internecine warfare between scores
of new schools of thought. It was the age of Panmaller,
Strobel, Freyus, Le Greuille and Osipowicz: the entire
legacy of Giese was submitted to a merciless examination.
The first atlases and inventories appeared, and new tech-
niques in remote control enabled instruments to transmit
stereophotographs from the interior of the asymmet-
riads, once considered impossible to explore. In the hub-
bub of controversy, the ‘minimal’ hypotheses were
contemptuously dismissed: even if the long-awaited con
tact with the ‘reasoning monster’ did not materialize, it
was argued that it was still worth investigating the car-
tilaginous cities of the mimoids and the ballooning moun-
tains that rose above the ocean because we would gain
valuable chemical and physio-chemical information, and
enlarge our understanding of the structure of giant mole-
cules. Nobody bothered even to refute the adherents of
this defeatist line of reasoning. Scientists devoted them-
selves to drawing up catalogues of the typical metamor-
phoses which are still standard works, and Frank

165

developed his bioplasmatic theory of the mimoids, which
has since been shown to be inaccurate, but remains a
superb example of intellectual audacity and logical con-
struction.

The thirty or so years of the first three ‘Gravinsky peri-
ods,’ with their open assurance and irresistibly optimistic
romanticism, constitute the infancy of Solarist studies.
Already a growing scepticism heralded the age of
maturity. Towards the end of the first quarter-century the
early colloido-mechanistic theories had found a distant
descendant in the concept of the ‘apsychic ocean,’ a new
and almost unanimous orthodoxy which threw overboard
the view of that entire generation of scientists who be-
lieved that their observations were evidence of a con-
scious will, teleological processes, and activity motivated
by some inner need of the ocean. This point of view was
now overwhelmingly repudiated, and the ground was
cleared for the team headed by Holden, Ionides and
Stoliva, whose lucid, analytically-based speculations con-
centrated on scrupulous examination of a growing body
of data. It was the golden age of the archivists. Microfilm
libraries burst at the seams with documents; expeditions,
some of them more than a thousand strong, were
equipped with the most lavish apparatus Earth could pro-
vide — robot recorders, sonar and radar, and the entire
range of spectrometers, radiation counters and so on.
Material was being accumulated at an accelerating tempo,
but the essential spirit of the research flagged, and in the
course of this period, still an optimistic one in spite of
everything, a decline set in.

The first phase of Solaristics had been shaped by the
personality of men like Giese, Strobel and Sevada, who
had remained adventurous whether they were asserting
or attacking a theoretical position. Sevada, the last of the
great Solarists, disappeared near the south pole of the
planet, and his death was never satisfactorily explained.
He fell victim to a mistake which not even a novice would
have made. Flying at low altitude, in full view of scores of
observers, his aircraft had plunged into the interior of an
agilus which was not even directly in its path. There was

166

speculation about a sudden heart attack or fainting fit, or
a mechanical failure, but I have always believed that this
was in fact the first suicide, brought on by the first abrupt
crisis of despair.

There were other ‘crises,’ not mentioned in Gravinsky,
whose details I was able to fill in out of my own knowledge
as I stared at the yellowed, closely-printed pages.

The later expressions of despair were in any case less
dramatic, just as outstanding personalities became rarer.
The recruitment of scientists to any particular field of
study in a given age has never been studied as a phenome-
non in its own right. Every generation throws up a fairly
constant number of brilliant and determined men; the
only difference lies in the direction they choose to take.
The absence or presence of such individuals in a particu-
lar field of study is probably explicable in terms of the new
perspectives offered. Opinions may differ about the re-
searchers of the classical age of Solarist studies, but no-
body can deny their stature, even their genius. For several
decades, the mysterious ocean had attracted the best
mathematicians and physicists, and the top specialists in
biophysics, information theory and electro-physiology.
Now, without warning, the army of researchers found it-
self leaderless. There remained a faceless mass of indus-
trious collectors and compilers. The occasional original
experiment might be devised, but the succession of vast
expeditions mounted on a worldwide scale petered out,
and the scientific world no longer echoed with ambitious,
controversial theories.

The machinery of Solaristics fell into disrepair, and
rusted over with hypotheses differentiated only in minor
details, and unanimous in their concentration on the
theme of the ocean’s degeneration, regression and intro-
version. Now and then a bolder, more interesting concept
might emerge, but it always amounted to a kind of indict-
ment of the ocean, viewed as the end-product of a devel-
opment which long ago, thousands of years before, had
gone through a phase of superior organization, and now
had nothing more than a physical unity. The argument
went that its many useless, absurd creations were its

167

death-throes— impressive enough, nonetheless— which
had been going on for centuries. Thus, for instance, the
extensors and mimoids were seen as tumors, and all the
surface processes of the huge fluid body as expressions
of chaos and anarchy. This approach to the problem be-
came an obsession. For seven or eight years, the academic
literature produced a spate of assertions which although
framed in polite, cautious terms, amounted to little more
than insults, the revenge of a rabble of leaderless suitors
when they realized that the object of their most pressing
attentions was indifferent to the point of obstinately ig-
noring all their advances.

A group of European psychologists once carried out a
public opinion poll spread over a period of several years.
Their report had no direct bearing on Solarist studies,
and was not included in the library collection, but I had
read it, and retained a clear memory of its findings. The
investigators had strikingly demonstrated that the
changes in lay opinion were closely correlated to the fluc-
tuations of opinion recorded in scientific circles.

That change was expressed even in the coordinating
committee of the Institute of Planetology, which controls
the financial appropriations for research, by means of a
progressive reduction in the budgets of institutes and
appointments devoted to Solarist studies, as well as by
restrictions on the size of the exploration teams.

Some scientists adopted a position at the other ex-
treme, and agitated for more vigorous steps to be taken.
The administrative director of the Universal Cosmologi-
cal Institute ventured to assert that the living ocean did
not despise men in the least, but had not noticed them, as
an elephant neither feels nor sees the ants crawling on its
back. To attract and hold the ocean’s attention, it would
be necessary to devise more powerful stimuli, and gigan-
tic machines tailored to the dimensions of the entire
planet. Malicious commentators were not slow to point
out that the director could well afford to be generous,
since it was the Institute of Planetology which would have
had to foot the bill.

Still the hypotheses rained down— old, ‘resurrected’

168

hypotheses, superficially modified, simplified, or com-
plicated to the extreme — and Solaristics, a relatively well-
defined discipline in spite of its scope, became an
increasingly tangled maze where every apparent exit led
to a dead end. In the climate of general indifference, stag-
nation and despondency, the ocean of Solaris was sub-
merging under an ocean of printed paper.

Two years before I began the stint in Gibarian’s labora-
tory which ended when I obtained the diploma of the
Institute, the Mett-Irving Foundation offered a huge prize
to anybody who could find a viable method of tapping the
energy of the ocean. The idea was not a new one. Several
cargoes of the plasmatic jelly had been shipped back to
Earth in the past, and various methods of preservation
had been patiently tested: high and low temperatures,
artificial micro-atmospheres and micro-climates, and
prolonged irradiation. The whole gamut of physical and
chemical processes had been run, only to end with the
same outcome, a gradual process of decomposition which
passed through well-defined stages, starting with wasting,
maceration, then first-degree (primary) and late (second-
ary) liquefaction. The samples removed from the plas-
matic growths and creations met with the same fate, with
certain variations in the phases of decomposition. The
end-product was always a light metallic ash.

Once the scientists recognized that it was impossible to
keep alive, or even in a ‘vegetative’ state, any fragment of
the ocean, large or small, in dissociation from the entire
organism, a growing tendency developed (under the in-
fluence of the Meunier-Proroch school) to isolate this
problem as the key to the mystery. It was seen as a matter
of interpretation — solve it, and the back of the problem
would be broken.

The quest for this key, the philosopher’s stone of Sola-
rist studies, had absorbed the time and energy of all kinds
of people with little or no scientific training. During the
fourth decade of Solaristics the craze spread like an epi-
demic, and provided a fertile ground for the psycholo-
gists. An unknown number of cranks and ignorant
fanatics toiled at their fumbling researches with a greater

169

enthusiasm than any which had animated the old prophets
of perpetual motion, or the squaring of the circle. The
craze fizzled out in only a few years, and by the time I was
ready to leave for Solaris it had vanished from the head-
lines and from conversation, and the ocean itself was
practically forgotten by the public.

I took care to replace the Compendium in its correct
alphabetical position, and in doing so dislodged a slim
pamphlet by Grastrom, one of the most eccentric authors
in Solarist literature. I had read the pamphlet, which was
dictated by the urge to understand what lies beyond the
grasp of mankind, and aimed in particular against the
individual, man, and the human species. It was the ab-
stract, acidulous work of an autodidact who had previ-
ously made a series of unusual contributions to various
marginal and rarefied branches of quantum physics. In
this fifteen-page booklet (his magnum opus!), Grastrom
set out to demonstrate that the most abstract achieve-
ments of science, the most advanced theories and victo-
ries of mathematics represented nothing more than a
stumbling, one or two-step progression from our rude,
prehistoric, anthropomorphic understanding of the uni-
verse around us. He pointed out correspondences with
the human body — the projections of our senses, the struc-
ture of our physical organization, and the physiological
limitations of man — in the equations of the theory of
relativity, the theorem of magnetic fields and the various
unified field theories. Grastrom’s conclusion was that
there neither was, nor could be, any question of ‘contact’
between mankind and any nonhuman civilization. This
broadside against humanity made no specific mention of
the living ocean, but its constant presence and scornful,
victorious silence could be felt between every line, at any
rate such had been my own impression. It was Gibarian
who drew it to my attention, and it must have been
Gibarian who had added it to the Station’s collection, on
his own authority, since Grastrom’s pamphlet was re-
garded more as a curiosity than a true contribution to
Solarist literature.

With a strange feeling almost of respect, I carefully slid

170

the slim pamphlet back into the crowded bookshelf, then
stroked the green bronze binding of the Solaris Annual
with my fingertips. In the space of a few days, we had
unquestionably gained positive information about a num-
ber of basic questions, which had made seas of ink flow
and fed innumerable controversies, yet had remained
sterile for lack of arguments. Today the mystery practi-
cally had us under siege, and we had powerful arguments.

Was the ocean a living creature? It could hardly be
doubted any longer by any but lovers of paradox or ob-
stinacy. It was no longer possible to deny the ‘psychic’
functions of the ocean, no matter how that term might be
defined. Certainly it was only too obvious that the ocean
had ‘noticed’ us. This fact alone invalidated that category
of Solarist theories which claimed that the ocean was an
‘introverted’ world, a ‘hermit entity,’ deprived by a pro-
cess of degeneration of the thinking organs it once pos-
sessed, unaware of the existence of external objects and
events, the prisoner of a gigantic vortex of mental cur-
rents created and confined in the depths of this monster
revolving between two suns.

Not only that, we had discovered that the ocean was
capable of reproducing what we ourselves had never suc-
ceeded in creating artifically — a perfect human body,
modified in its sub-atomic structure for purposes we
could not guess.

The ocean lived, thought and acted. The ‘Solaris prob-
lem’ had not been annihilated by its very absurdity. We
were truly dealing with a living creature. The ‘lost’ faculty
was not lost at all. All this now seemed proved beyond
doubt. Like it or not, men must pay attention to this
neighbor, light years away, but nevertheless a neighbor
situated inside our sphere of expansion, and more disqui-
eting than all the rest of the universe.

Perhaps we had arrived at a turning-point. What would
the high-level decision be? Would we be ordered to give
up and return to Earth, immediately or in the near future?
Was it even possible that we would be ordered to liquidate
the Station? It was at least not improbable. But I did not
favor the solution by retreat. The existence of the thinking

171

colossus was bound to go on haunting men’s minds. Even
when man had explored every corner of the cosmos, and
established relations with other civilizations founded by
creatures similar to ourselves, Solaris would remain an
eternal challenge.

Misplaced among the thick volumes of the Annual, I
discovered a small calf-bound book, and scanned its
scuffed, worn cover for a moment. It was Muntius’s Intro-
duction to Solaristics, published many years before. I had
read it in a single night, after Gibarian had smilingly lent
me his personal copy; and when I had turned the final
page the light of a new Earth dawn was shining through
my window. According to Muntius, Solaristics is the space
era’s equivalent of religion: faith disguised as science.
Contact, the stated aim of Solaristics, is no less vague and
obscure than the communion of the saints, or the second
coming of the Messiah. Exploration is a liturgy using the
language of methodology; the drudgery of the Solarists is
carried out only in the expectation of fulfillment, of an
Annunciation, for there are not and cannot be any bridges
between Solaris and Earth. The comparison is reinforced
by obvious parallels: Solarists reject arguments — no ex-
periences in common, no communicable notions— just as
the faithful rejected the arguments that undermined the
foundations of their belief. Then again, what can mankind
expect or hope for out of a joint ‘pooling of information’
with the living ocean? A catalogue of the vicissitudes as-
sociated with an existence of such infinite duration that it
probably has no memory of its origins? A description of
the aspirations, passions and sufferings that find expres-
sion in the perpetual creation of living mountains? The
apotheosis of mathematics, the revelation of plenitude in
isolation and renunciation? But all this represents a body
of incommunicable knowledge. Transposed into any hu-
man language, the values and meanings involved lose all
substance; they cannot be brought intact through the bar-
rier. In any case, the ‘adepts’ do not expect such revela-
tions — of the order of poetry, rather than science — since
unconsciously it is Revelation itself that they expect, and
this revelation is to explain to them the meaning of the

172

destiny of man! Solaristics is a revival of long-vanished
myths, the expression of mystical nostalgias which men
are unwilling to confess openly. The cornerstone is
deeply entrenched in the foundations of the edifice: it is
the hope of Redemption.

Solarists are incapable of recognizing this truth, and
consequently take care to avoid any interpretation of Con-
tact, which is presented in their writings as an ultimate
goal, whereas originally it had been considered as a be-
ginning, and as a step onto a new path, among many other
possible paths. Over the years, Contact has become sanc-
tified. It has become the heaven of eternity.

Muntius analyzes this ‘heresy’ of planetology very sim-
ply and trenchantly. He brilliantly dismantles the Solarist
myth, or rather the myth of the Mission of Mankind.

Muntius’s had been the first voice raised in protest, and
had encountered the contemptuous silence of the experts,
at a time when they still retained a romantic confidence in
the development of Solaristics. After all, how could they
have accepted a thesis that struck at the foundations of
their achievements?

Solaristics went on waiting for the man who would rees-
tablish it on a firm foundation and define its frontiers with
precision. Five years after the death of Muntius, when his
pamphlet had become a rare collectors’ piece, a group of
Norwegian researchers founded a school named after
him. In contact with the personalities of his various
spiritual heirs, the quiet thought of the master went
through profound transformations; it led to the corrosive
irony of Erie Ennesson and, on a more mundane plane,
the ‘utilitarian’ or ‘utilitarianistic’ Solaristics of Fa-leng,
who argued that science should settle for the immediate
advantages offered by exploration, and not concern itself
with any intellectual communion of two civilizations, or
some illusory contact. Compared with the ruthless, lucid
analysis of Muntius, the works of his disciples are hardly
more than compilations and sometimes vulgarizations,
with the exception of Ennesson’s essays and perhaps the
studies of Takata. Muntius himself had already defined
the complete development of Solarist concepts. He called

173

the first phase the era of the ‘prophets,’ among whom he
included Giese, Holden and Sevada; the second, the
‘great schism’ — the fragmentation of the one Solarist
church into a number of warring sects; and he anticipated
a third phase, which would set in when there was nothing
left to investigate, and manifest itself in a crabbed, aca-
demic dogmatism. This prophecy was to prove inaccu-
rate, however. In my opinion, Gibarian was right to
characterize Muntius’s strictures as a monumental sim-
plification which ignored all the aspects of Solarist studies
that had nothing in common with a creed, since the work
of interpretation based itself only on the concrete evi-
dence of a globe orbiting two suns.

Slipped between two pages of Muntius’s pamphlet, I
discovered an off-print of the quarterly review Parerga
Solariana, which turned out to be one of the first articles
written by Gibarian, even before he was appointed direc-
tor of the Institute. The article was called “Why I am a
Solarist” and began with a concise account of all the
material phenomena which confirmed the possibility of
contact. Gibarian belonged to that generation of re-
searchers who had been daring and optimistic enough to
hark back to the golden age, and who did not disown their
own version of a faith that overstepped the frontiers im-
posed by science, and yet remained concrete, since it pre-
supposed the success of perseverance.

Gibarian had been influenced by the classical work in
bio-electronics for which the Eurasian school of Cho En-
min, Ngyalla and Kawakadze is famous. Their studies es-
tablished an analogy between the charted electrical
activity of the brain and certain discharges occurring
deep in the plasma before the appearance, for example,
of elementary polymorphs or twin solarids. Gibarian was
opposed to anthropomorphizing interpretations, and the
mystifications of the psychoanalytic, psychiatric and
neurophysiological schools which attempted to endow the
ocean with the symptoms of human illnesses, epilepsy
among them (supposed to correspond with the spas-
modic eruptions of the asymmetriads). He was one of the
most cautious and logical proponents of Contact, and saw

174

no advantage in the kind of sensationalism which was in
any case becoming more and more rare as applied to
Solaris.

My own doctoral thesis received a fair amount of atten-
tion, not all of it welcome. It was based on the discoveries
of Bergmann and Reynolds, who had succeeded in isolat-
ing and ‘filtering’ the elements of the most powerful emo-
tions — despair, grief and pleasure — out of the mass of
general mental processes. Systematically comparing their
recordings with the electrical discharges from the ocean,
I had observed oscillations in certain parts of symmet-
riads and at the bases of nascent mimoids which were
sufficiently analogous to deserve further investigation.
The journalists pounced on my thesis, and in some news-
papers my name was coupled with grotesque headlines —
‘The Despairing Jelly,’ ‘The Planet in Orgasm.’ But this
dubious fame did have the fortunate consequence (or so
I had thought a few days previously) of attracting the
attention of Gibarian, who naturally could not read every
new publication dealing with Solaris. The letter he sent
me ended a chapter of my life, and began a new one . . .

175

The Dreams

When six days passed with no reaction from the ocean, we
decided to repeat the experiment. Until now, the Station
had been located at the intersection of the forty-third
parallel and the 116th meridian. We moved south, main-
taining a constant altitude of 1200 feet above the ocean —
our radar confirmed automatic observations relayed by
the artificial satellite which indicated a build-up of activity
in the plasma of the southern hemisphere.

Forty-eight hours later, a beam of X-rays modulated by
my own brain-patterns was bombarding the almost mo-
tionless surface of the ocean at regular intervals.

At the end of this two-day journey we had reached the
outskirts of the polar region. The disc of the blue sun was
setting to one side of the horizon, while on the opposite
side billowing purple clouds announced the dawn of the
red sun. In the sky, blinding flames and showers of green
sparks clashed with the dull purple glow. Even the ocean
participated in the battle between the two stars, here glit-
tering with mercurial flashes, there with crimson reflec-
tions. The smallest cloud passing overhead brightened
the shining foam on the wave-crests with iridescence. The
blue sun had barely set when, at the meeting of ocean and
sky, indistinct and drowned in blood-red mist (but sig-
nalled immediately by the detectors), a symmetriad blos-

176

somed like a gigantic crystal flower. The Station held its
course, and after fifteen minutes the colossal ruby throb-
bing with dying gleams was once again hidden beneath
the horizon. Some minutes later, a thin column spouted
thousands of yards upwards into the atmosphere, its base
obscured from view by the curvature of the planet. This
fantastic tree, which went on growing and gushing blood
and quicksilver, marked the end of the symmetriad: the
tangled branches at the top of the column melted into a
huge mushroom shape, illuminated by both suns simul-
taneously, and carried on the wind, while the lower part
bulged, broke up into heavy clusters, and slowly sank. The
death-throes lasted well over an hour.

Another two days passed. Our X-rays had irradiated a
vast stretch of the ocean, and we made a final repetition
of the experiment. From our observation post we spotted
a chain of islets two hundred and fifty miles to the south
— six rocky promontories encrusted with a snowy sub-
stance which was in fact a deposit of organic origin, prov-
ing that the mountainous formation had once been part
of the ocean bed.

We then moved south-west, and skirted a chain of
mountains capped by clouds which gathered during the
red day, and then disappeared. Ten days had elapsed
since the first experiment.

On the surface, not much was happening in the Station.
Sartorius had programmed the experiment for automatic
repetition at set intervals. I did not even know whether
anybody was checking the apparatus for correct function.
In fact, the calm was not as complete as it seemed, but not
because of any human activity.

I was afraid that Sartorius had no real intention of aban-
doning the construction of the disruptor. And how would
Snow react when he found out that I had kept information
from him and exaggerated the dangers we might run in
the attempt to annihilate neutrino structures? Yet neither
of the two said anything further about the project, and I
kept wondering why they were so silent. I vaguely sus-
pected them of keeping something from me — perhaps
they had been working in secret — and every day I in-

177

spected the room which housed the disruptor, a window-
less cell situated directly underneath the main laboratory.
I never found anybody in the room, and the layer of dust
over the armatures and cables of the apparatus proved
that it had not been touched for weeks.

As a matter of fact, I did not meet anybody anywhere,
and could not get through to Snow any more: nobody
answered when I tried to call the radio cabin. Somebody
had to be controlling the Station’s movements, but who?
I had no idea, and oddly enough I considered the question
was out of my province. The absence of response from
the ocean left me equally indifferent, so much so that after
two or three days I had stopped being either hopeful or
apprehensive, and had completely written off the experi-
ment and its possible results.

For days on end, I remained sitting in the library or in
my cabin, accompanied by the silent shadow of Rheya. I
was aware that there was an unease between us, and that
my state ot mindless suspension could not go on for ever.
Obviously it was up to me to break the stalemate, but I
resisted the very idea of any kind of change: I was incapa-
ble of making the most trivial decision. Everything inside
the Station, and my relationship with Rheya in particular,
felt fragile and insubstantial, as if the slightest alteration
could shatter the perilous equilibrium and bring down
ruin. I could not tell where this feeling originated, and the
strangest thing of all is that Rheya too had a similar expe-
rience. When I look back on those moments today, I have
a strong conviction that this atmosphere of uncertainty
and suspense, and my presentiment of impending disas-
ter, was provoked by an invisible presence which had
taken possession of the Station. I believe too that I can
claim that this presence manifested itself just as power-
fully in dreams. I have never had visions of that kind
before or since, so I decided to note them down and to
transcribe them approximately, in so far as my vocabulary
permits, given that I can convey only fragmentary
glimpses almost entirely denuded of an incommunicable
horror.

A blurred region, in the heart of vastness, far from

178

earth and heaven, with no ground underfoot, no vault of
sky overhead, nothing. I am the prisoner of an alien mat-
ter and my body is clothed in a dead, formless substance
— or rather I have no body, I am that alien matter. Nebu-
lous pale pink globules surround me, suspended in a
medium more opaque than air, for objects only become
clear at very close range, although when they do approach
they are abnormally distinct, and their presence comes
home to me with a preternatural vividness. The convic-
tion of its substantial, tangible reality is now so over-
whelming that later, when I wake up, I have the impression
that I have just left a state of true perception, and every-
thing I see after opening my eyes seems hazy and unreal.

That is how the dream begins. All around me, some-
thing is awaiting my consent, my inner acquiescence, and
I know, or rather the knowledge exists, that I must not
give \yay to an unknown temptation, for the more the
silence seems to promise, the more terrible the outcome
will be. Yet I essentially know no such thing, because I
would be afraid if I knew, and I never felt the slightest fear.

I wait. Out of the enveloping pink mist, an invisible
object emerges, and touches me. Inert, locked in the alien
matter that encloses me, I can neither retreat nor turn
away, and still I am being touched, my prison is being
probed, and I feel this contact like a hand, and the hand
recreates me. Until now, I thought I saw, but had no eyes:
now I have eyes! Under the caress of the hesitant fingers,
my lips and cheeks emerge from the void, and as the
caress goes further I have a face, breath stirs in my chest
— I exist. And recreated, I in my turn create: a face ap-
pears before me that I have never seen until now, at once
mysterious and known. I strain to meet its gaze, but I
cannot impose any direction on my own, and we discover
one another mutually, beyond any effort of will, in an
absorbed silence. I have become alive again, and I feel as
if there is no limitation on my powers. This creature — a
woman? — stays near me, and we are motionless. The beat
of our hearts combines, and all at once, out of the sur-
rounding void where nothing exists or can exist, steals a
presence of indefinable, unimaginable cruelty. The caress

179

that created us and which wrapped us in a golden cloak
becomes the crawling of innumerable fingers. Our white,
naked bodies dissolve into a swarm of black creeping
things, and I am — we are — a mass of glutinous coiling
worms, endless, and in that infinity, no, I am infinite, and
I howl soundlessly, begging for death and for an end. But
simultaneously I am dispersed in all directions, and my
grief expands in a suffering more acute than any waking
state, a pervasive, scattered pain piercing the distant
blacks and reds, hard as rock and ever-increasing, a
mountain of grief visible in the dazzling light of another
world.

That dream was one of the simplest. I cannot describe
the others, for lack of a language to convey their dread.
In those dreams, I was unaware of the existence of Rheya,
nor was there any echo of past or recent events.

There were also visionless dreams, where in an unmov-
ing, clotted silence I felt myself being slowly and minutely
explored, although no instrument or hand touched me.
Yet I felt myself being invaded through and through, I
crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.
Total annihilation was succeeded by such terror that its
memory alone makes my heart beat faster today.

So the days passed, each one like the next. I was indiff-
erent to everything, fearing only the night and unable to
find a means of escape from the dreams. Rheya never
slept. I lay beside her, fighting against sleep, and the ten-
derness with which I clung to her was only a pretext, a way
of avoiding the moment when I would be compelled to
close my eyes. I had not mentioned these nightmares to
her, but she must have guessed, for her attitude involun-
tarily betrayed a sense of deep humiliation.

As I say, I had not seen Snow or Sartorius for some
time, yet Snow gave occasional signs of life. He would
leave a note at my door, or call me on the videophone,
asking whether I had noticed any new event or change, or
anything at all which could be interpreted as a response
to the repeated X-ray bombardments. I told him No, and
asked him the same question, but there in the little screen
Snow only shook his head.

180

On the fifteenth day after the conclusion of the experi-
ment, I woke up earlier than usual, exhausted by the previ-
ous night’s dreams. All my limbs were numbed, as if
emerging from the effects of a powerful narcotic. The first
rays of the red sun shone through the window, a blanket
of red flame rippled over the surface of the ocean, and I
realized that the vast expanse which had not been dis-
turbed by the slightest movement in the past four days
was beginning to stir. The dark ocean was abruptly cov-
ered by a thin veil of mist which seemed at the same time
to have a very palpable consistency. Here and there the
mist shook, and tremors spread out to the horizon in all
directions. Now the ocean disappeared altogether
beneath thick, corrugated membranes with pink swellings
and pearly depressions, and these strange waves sus-
pended above the ocean swirled suddenly and coalesced
into great balls of blue-green foam. A tempest of wind
hurled them upwards to the height of the Station, and
wherever I looked, immense membranous wings were
soaring in the red sky. Some of these wings of foam,
which blotted out the sun, were pitch-black, and others
shone with highlights of purple as they were exposed
obliquely to the sunlight. Still the phenomenon con-
tinued, as if the ocean were mutating, or shedding an old
scaly skin. Now and again the dark surface of the ocean
could be glimpsed through a gap that the foam filled in an
instant. Wings of foam planed all around me, only a few
yards from the window, and one swooped to rub against
the window pane like a silken scarf. As the ocean went on
giving birth to these fantastic birds, the first flights were
already dissipating high above, decomposing at their
zenith into transparent filaments.

The Station remained motionless as long as the spec-
tacle lasted — about three hours, until night intervened.
And even after the sun had set and the shadows had
spread over the ocean, the lurid glow of myriads of wings
could still be discerned rising into the sky, hovering in
massed ranks, and climbing effortlessly towards the light.

This performance had terrified Rheya, but it was no less
disconcerting for me, although its novelty ought not to

181

have been disturbing, since two or three times a year, and
oftener when luck smiled on them, Solarists observed
forms and creations never previously recorded.

The following night, an hour before the blue sunrise,
we witnessed another effect: the ocean was becoming
phosphorescent. Pools of grey light were rising and fall-
ing to the rhythm of invisible waves. Isolated at first, these
gray patches quickly spread and joined together, and
soon made up a carpet of spectral light extending as far
as the eye could see. The intensity of the light grew
progressively for some fifteen to twenty minutes, then the
phenomenon came to a surprising end. A pall of shadow
approached from the west, stretching along a front sev-
eral hundred miles wide. When this moving shadow had
overtaken the Station, the phosphorescent part of the
ocean, retreating eastward, seemed to be trying to escape
from the vast extinguisher. It was like an aurora put to
flight, and retreating as far as the horizon, which was
edged by a fading glow before the darkness conquered.
Shortly afterwards, the sun rose above the ocean wastes,
which were furrowed by a few solidified waves, whose
mercurial reflections played on my window.

The phosphorescence was a recorded effect, some-
times observed before the eruption of an asymmetriad,
but always indicative of a local increase in the activity of
the plasma. Nevertheless, in the course of the next two
weeks nothing happened either inside or outside the Sta-
tion, except on one occasion when in the middle of the
night I heard the sound of a piercing scream which came
from no human throat. The shrill, protracted howling
woke me out of a nightmare, and at first I thought that it
was the beginning of another. Before falling asleep, I had
heard dull noises coming from the direction of the labora-
tory, part of which lay directly over my cabin. It sounded
like heavy objects and machinery being shifted. When I
realized that I was not dreaming, I decided that the
scream also came from above, but could not understand
how it managed to penetrate the sound-proof ceiling. The
terrible sounds went on for almost half an hour, until my
nerves jangled and I was pouring with sweat. I was about

182

to go up and investigate when the screaming stopped, to
be replaced by more muffled sounds as of objects being
dragged across the floor.

Rheya and I were sitting in the kitchen two days later
when Snow came in. He was dressed as people dress on
Earth after their day’s work, and looked like a different
person, taller and older. He did not look at us, or pull up
a chair, but stood at the table, opened a can of meat and
began cramming it down between mouthfuls of bread.
His jacket sleeve brushed against the greasy top of the
can.

“Look out. Snow, your sleeve!”

“What?” he grunted, then went on stuffing himself with
food as if he had not eaten for days. He poured out a glass
of wine, drank it at a gulp, sighed, and wiped his lips. Then
he looked at me with bloodshot eyes, and mumbled:

“So you’ve stopped shaving? Ah . . .”

Rheya cleared the table. Snow swayed on his heels, then
pulled a face and sucked his teeth noisily, deliberately
exaggerating the action. He stared at me insistently:

“So you’ve decided not to shave?” I made no reply.
“Believe me,” he went on, “you’re making a mistake. That
was how it started with him to . .

“Go and lie down.”

“What? Just when I feel like talking? Listen, Kelvin,
perhaps it wishes well . . . perhaps it wants to please us but
doesn’t quite know how to set about the job. It spies out
desires in our brains, and only two per cent of mental
processes are conscious. That means it knows us better
than we know ourselves. We’ve got to reach an under-
standing with it. Are you listening? Don’t you want to?
Why?“ — he was sobbing by now — “why don’t you shave?”

“Shut up! . . . you’re drunk.”

“Me, drunk? And what if I am?Just because I drift about
from one end of space to another and poke my nose into
the cosmos, does that mean I’m not allowed to get drunk?
Why not? You believe in the mission of mankind, don’t
you Kelvin? Gibarian told me about you before he started
letting his beard grow ... It was a very good description.
Just don’t go to the lab, if you don’t want to lose your faith.

183

It belongs to Sartorius — Faust in reverse . . . he’s looking
for a cure for immortality! He is the last knight of the Holy
Contact, the man we need. His latest discovery is pretty
good too . . . prolonged dying. Not bad, eh? Agonia per-
petua ... of the straw ... the straw hats . . . and still you
don’t drink, Kelvin?”

He raised his swollen eyelids and looked at Rheya, who
was standing quite still with her back to the wall. Then he
began chanting:

“O fair Aphrodite, child of Ocean, your divine hand
. . .” He choked with laughter. “It fits, eh, Kel . . . vin . . .”

He broke off in a fit of coughing.

“Shut up! Shut up and get out!” I grated through
clenched teeth.

“You’re chucking me out? You too? You don’t shave
and you chuck me out? What about my warnings, and my
advice? Interstellar colleagues ought to help each other!
Listen Kelvin, let’s go down and open the traps and call
out. It might hear us. But what’s its name? We have named
all the stars and all the planets, even though they might
already have had names of their own. What a nerve! Come
on, let’s go down. We’ll shout it such a description of the
trick it’s played us that it will be touched. It will make us
silver symmetriads, pray to us in calculus, send us its
blood-stained angels. It will share our troubles and ter-
rors, and beg us to help it die. It is already begging us,
imploring us. It implores us to help it die with every one
of its creations. You’re not amused . . . but you know I’m
just a joker. If man had more of a sense of humor, things
might have turned out differently. Do you know what he
wants to do? He wants to punish this ocean, hear it
screaming out of all its mountains at once. If you think
he’ll never have the nerve to submit his plan to that bunch
of doddering ancients who sent us here to redeem sins we
haven’t committed, you’re right— he is afraid. But he is
only afraid of the little hat. He won’t let anybody see the
little hat, he won’t dare, not Faust . . .”

I said nothing. Snow’s swaying increased. Tears were
streaming down his cheeks and onto his clothes. He went
on:

184

“Who is responsible? Who is responsible for this situa-
tion? Gibarian? Giese? Einstein? Plato? All criminals . . .
Just you think, in a rocket a man takes the risk of bursting
like a balloon, or freezing, or roasting, or sweating all his
blood out in a single gush, before he can even cry out, and
all that remains is bits of bone floating inside armored
hulls, in accordance with the laws of Newton as corrected
by Einstein, those two milestones in our progress. Down
the road we go, all in good faith, and see where it gets us.
Think about our success Kelvin; think about our cabins,
the unbreakable plates, the immortal sinks, legions of
faithful wardrobes, devoted cupboards ... I wouldn’t be
talking this way if I weren’t drunk, but sooner or later
somebody was bound to say it, weren’t they? You sit there
like a baby in a slaughterhouse, and you let your beard
grow . . . Who’s to blame? Find out for yourself.”

He turned slowly and went out, putting an arm out
against the doorpost to steady himself. Then his footsteps
died away along the corridor.

I tried not to look at Rheya, but my eyes were drawn to
hers in spite of myself. I wanted to get up, take her in my
arms and stroke her hair. I did not move.

185

Victory

Another three weeks. The shutters rose and fell on time.
I was still a prisoner in my nightmares, and every morning
the play began again. But was it a play? I put on a feigned
composure, and Rheya played the same game. The decep-
tion was mutual and deliberate, and our agreement only
contributed to our ultimate evasion. We talked about the
future, and our life on Earth on the outskirts of some
great city. We would spend the rest of our lives among
green trees and under a blue sky, and never leave Earth
again. Together we planned the lay-out of our house and
garden and argued over details like the location of a
hedge or a bench.

I do not believe that I was sincere for a single instant.
Our plans were impossible, and I knew it, for even if
Rheya could leave the Station and survive the voyage, how
could I have got through the immigration checks with my
clandestine passenger? Earth admits only human beings,
and even then only when they carry the necessary papers.
Rheya would be detained for an identity check at the first
barrier, we would be separated, and she would give her-
self away at once. The Station was the one place where we
could live together. Rheya must have known that, or found
it out.

One night I heard Rheya get out of bed silently. I

186

wanted to stop her; in the darkness and silence we occa-
sionally managed to throw off our despair for a while by
making each other forget. Rheya did not notice that I had
woken up. When I stretched my hand out, she was already
out of bed, and walking bare-foot towards the door. With-
out daring to raise my voice, I whispered her name, but
she was outside, and a narrow shaft of light shone through
the doorway from the corridor.

There was a sound of whispering. Rheya was talking to
somebody . . . but who? Panic overtook me when I tried
to stand up, and my legs would not move. I listened, but
heard nothing. The blood hammered through my tem-
ples. I started counting, and was approaching a thousand
when there was a movement in the doorway and Rheya
returned. She stood there for a second without moving,
and I made myself breathe evenly.

“Kris?” she whispered.

I did not answer.

She slid quickly into bed and lay down, taking care not
to disturb me. Questions buzzed in my mind, but I would
not let myself be the first to speak, and made no move.
The silent questioning went on for an hour, maybe more.
Then I fell asleep.

The morning was like any other. I watched Rheya fur-
tively, but could not see any change in her behavior. After
breakfast, we sat at the big panoramic window. The Sta-
tion was hovering among purple clouds. Rheya was read-
ing, and as I stared out I suddenly noticed that by holding
my head at a certain angle I could see us both reflected in
the window. I took my hand off the rail. Rheya had no idea
that I was watching her. She glanced at me, obviously
decided from my posture that I was looking at the ocean,
then bent to kiss the place where my hand had rested. In
a moment she was reading her book again.

“Rheya,” I asked gently, “where did you go last night?”

“Last night?”

“Yes.”

“You . . . you must have been dreaming, Kris. I didn’t
go anywhere.”

“You didn’t leave the cabin?”

187

“No. It must have been a dream.”

“Perhaps . . . yes, perhaps I dreamt it.”

The same evening, I started talking about our return to
Earth again, but Rheya stopped me:

“Don’t talk to me about the journey again, Kris. I don’t
want to hear any more about it, you know very well . . .”

“What?”

“No, nothing.”

After we went to bed, she said that she was thirsty:

“There’s a glass of fruit-juice on the table over there.
Could you give it to me?” She drank half of it then handed
it to me.

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Drink to my health then,” she smiled.

It tasted slightly bitter, but my mind was on other
things. She switched the light off.

“Rheya ... If you won’t talk about the voyage, let’s talk
about something else.”

“If I did not exist, would you marry?”

“No.”

“Never?”

‘Never.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I was by myself for ten years and I didn’t
marry again. Let’s not talk about that . . My head was
spinning as if I had been drinking too much.

“No, let’s talk about it. What if I begged you to?”

“To marry again? Don’t be silly, Rheya. I don’t need
anybody except you.”

I felt her breath on my face and her arms holding me:

“Say it another way.”

“I love you.”

Her head fell to my shoulder, and I felt tears.

“Rheya, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing . . Her voice echoed
into silence, and my eyes closed.

The red dawn woke me with a splitting head and a neck
so stiff that I felt as if the bones were welded together. My
tongue was swollen, and my mouth felt foul. Then I
reached out for Rheya, and my hand touched a cold sheet.

188

I sat up with a start.

I was alone — alone in bed and in the cabin. The concave
window reflected a row of red suns. I dragged myself out
of bed and staggered over to the bathroom, reeling like
a drunkard and propping myself up on the furniture. It
was empty. So was the workshop.

“Rheya!”

Calling, running up and down the corridor.

“Rheya!” I screamed, one last time, then my voice gave
out. I already knew the truth . . .

I do not remember the exact sequence of events after
that, as I stumbled half naked through all the length and
breadth of the Station. It seems to me that I even went into
the refrigeration section, searched through the storage
rooms, hammered with my fists on bolted doors then
came back again to throw myself against doors which had
already resisted me. I half-fell down flights of steps,
picked myself up and hurried onwards. When I reached
the double armoured doors which opened onto the ocean
I was still calling, still hoping that it was a dream. Some-
body was standing by me. Hands took hold of me and
pulled me away.

I came to my senses again lying on a metal table in the
little workshop and gasping for breath. My throat and
nostrils were burning with some alcoholic vapor, my shirt
was soaked in water, and my hair plastered over my skull.

Snow was busy at a medicine cupboard, shifting instru-
ments and glass vessels which clattered with an unbeara-
ble din. Then his face appeared, looking gravely down
into my eyes.

“Where is she?”

“She is not here.”

“But . . . Rheya . . .”

He bent over me, brought his face closer, and spoke
very slowly and clearly:

“Rheya is dead.”

“She will come back,” I whispered.

Instead of dreading her return, I wanted it. I did not
attempt to remind myself why I myself had once tried to
drive her away, and why I had been so afraid of her return.

189

“Drink this.”

Snow held out a glass, and I threw it in his face. He
staggered back, rubbing his eyes, and by the time he
opened them again I was on my feet and standing over
him. How small he was . . .

“It was you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on Snow, you know what I mean. It was you who
met her the other night. You told her to give me a sleep-
ing pill . . . What has happened to her? Tell me!”

He felt in his shirt-pocket and took out an envelope. I
snatched it out of his hand. It was sealed, and there was
no inscription. Inside was a sheet of paper folded twice,
and I recognized the sprawling, rather childish handwrit-
ing:

“My darling, I was the one who asked him. He is a good
man. I am sorry / had to lie to you. I beg you to give me
this one wish — hear him out, and do nothing to harm
yourself. You have been marvellous. ”

There was one more word, which she had crossed out,
but I could see that she had signed “Rheya.”

My mind was now absolutely clear. Even if I had wanted
to scream hysterically, my voice had gone, and I did not
even have the strength to groan.

“How . . . ?”

“Later, Kelvin. You’ve got to calm down.”

“I’m calm now. Tell me how."

“Disintegration.”

“But . . . what did you use?”

“The Roche apparatus was unsuitable. Sartorius built
something else, a new destabilizer. A miniature instru-
ment, with a range of a few yards.”

“And she ...”

“She disappeared. A pop, and a puff of air. That’s all.”

“A short-range instrument ...”

“Yes, we didn’t have the resources for anything big-
ger.”

190

The walls loomed over me, and I shut my eyes.

“She will come back.”

“No.”

“What do you know about it?”

“You remember the wings of foam? Since that day, they
do not come back.”

“You killed her,” I whispered.

“Yes ... In my place, what else would you have done?”

I turned away from him and began pacing up and down
the room. Nine steps to the corner. About turn. Nine
more rapid steps, and I was facing Snow again.

“Listen, we’ll write a report. We’ll ask for an immediate
link with the Council. It’s feasible, and they’ll accept — they
must. The planet will no longer be subject to the four-
power convention. We’ll be authorized to use any means
at our disposal. We can send for anti-matter generators.
Nothing can stand up against them, nothing ...” I was
shouting now, and blinded with tears.

“You want to destroy it? Why?”

“Get out, leave me alone!”

“No, I won’t get out.”

“Snow!” I glared at him, and he shook his head. “What
do you want? What am I supposed to do?”

He walked back to the table.

“Fine, we’ll draw up a report.”

I started pacing again.

“Sit down!”

“I’ll do what I like!”

“There are two distinct questions. One, the facts. Two,
our recommendations.”

“Do we have to talk about it now?”

“Yes, now.”

“I won’t listen, you hear? I’m not interested in your
distinctions.”

“We sent our last message about two months ago,
before Gibarian’s death. We’ll have to establish exactly
how the'visitor’phenomena function ...”

I grabbed his arm:

“Will you shut up!”

191

“Hit me if you like, but I will not shut up.”

“Oh, talk away, if it gives you pleasure ...” I let him

go ;<

“Good, listen. Sartorius will want to conceal certain
facts. I’m almost certain of it.”

“And what about you? Won’t you conceal anything?”

“No. Not now. This business goes further than individ-
ual responsibilities. You know that as well as I do. ‘It’ has
given a demonstration of considered activity. It is capable
of carrying out organic synthesis on the most complex
level, a synthesis we ourselves have never managed to
achieve. It knows the structure, micro-structure and me-
tabolism of our bodies ...”

“All right . . . But why stop there? It has performed a
series of. . . experiments on us. Psychic vivisection. It has
used knowledge which it stole from our minds without
our consent.”

“Those are not facts, Kelvin. They are not even propo-
sitions. They are theories. You could say that it has taken
account of desires locked into secret recesses of our
brains. Perhaps it was sending us . . . presents.”

“Presents! My God!” I shook with a fit of uncontrollable
laughter.

“Take it easy!” Snow took hold of my hand, and I tight-
ened my grip until I heard bones cracking. He went on
looking at me without any change of expression. I let go,
and walked over to a corner of the workshop:

“I’ll try to get hold of myself.”

“Yes, of course. I understand. What do we ask them?”

“I leave it to you ... I can’t think straight right now. Did
she say anything — before?”

“No, nothing. If you want my opinion, from now on we
stand a chance.”

“A chance? What chance?” I stared at him, and light
suddenly dawned. “Contact? Still Contact? Haven’t you
had enough of this madhouse? What more do you need?
No, it’s out of the question. Count me out!”

“Why not,” he asked quietly. “You yourself instinctively
treat it like a human being, now more than ever. You hate
it.”

192

“And you don’t?”

“No, Kelvin. It is blind.” — I thought that I might not
have heard him correctly. — . . or rather it ‘sees’ in a
different way from ourselves. We do not exist for it in the
same sense that we exist for each other. We recognize one
another by the appearance of the face and the body. That
appearance is a transparent window to the ocean. It in-
troduces itself directly into the brain.”

“Right, what if it does? What are you driving at? It
succeeded in recreating a human being who exists only in
my memory, and so accurately that her eyes, her gestures,
her voice ...”

“Don’t stop. Talk.”

“I’m talking . . . Her voice . . . because it is able to read
us like a book. You see what I mean?”

“Yes, that it could make itself understood.”

“Doesn’t that follow?”

“No, not necessarily. Perhaps it used a formula which
is not expressed in verbal terms. It may be taken from a
recording imprinted on our minds, but a man’s memory
is stored in terms of nucleic acids etching asynchronous
large-moleculed crystals. ‘It’ removed the deepest, most
isolated imprint, the most ‘assimilated’ structure, without
necessarily knowing what it meant to us. Suppose, I’m
capable of reproducing the architecture of a symmetriad,
and I know its composition and have the requisite tech-
nology ... I create a symmetriad and I drop it into the
ocean. But I don’t know why I’m doing so, I don’t know
its function, and I don’t know what the symmetriad means
to the ocean ...”

“Yes. You may be right. In that case it wished us no
harm, and it was not trying to destroy us. Yes, it’s possible
. . . and with no intention ...”

My mouth began to tremble.

“Kelvin!”

“All right, don’t get worried. You are kind, the ocean
is kind. Everybody is kind. But why? Explain that. Why has
it done this? What did you say ... to her?”

“The truth.”

“I asked you what you said.”

193

“You know very well. Come back to my cabin and we’ll
write out the report. Come on.”

“Wait. What exactly do you want? You can’t be intend-
ing to remain in the Station.”

“Yes, I want to stay.”

194

The Old Mimoid

I sat by the panoramic window, looking at the ocean.
There was nothing to do now that the report, which had
taken five days to compile, was only a pattern of waves in
space. It would be months before a similar pattern would
leave earth to create its own line of disturbance in the
gravitational field of the galaxy towards the twin suns of
Solaris.

Under the red sun, the ocean was darker than ever, and
the horizon was obscured by a reddish mist. The weather
was unusually close, and seemed to be building up to-
wards one of the terrible hurricanes which broke out two
or three times a year on the surface of the planet, whose
sole inhabitant, it is reasonable to suppose, controlled the
climate and willed its storms.

There were several months to go before I could leave.
From my vantage point in the observatory I would watch
the birth of the days — a disc of pale gold or faded purple.
Now and then I would come upon the light of dawn play-
ing among the fluid forms of some edifice risen from the
ocean, watch the sun reflected on the silver sphere of a
symmetriad, follow the oscillations of the graceful agi-
luses that curve in the wind, and linger to examine old
powdery mimoids.

And eventually, the screens of all the videophones

195

would start to blink and all the communications equip-
ment would spring to life again, revived by an impulse
originating billions of miles away and announcing the
arrival of a metal colossus. The Ulysses, or it might be the
Prometheus, would land on the Station to the piercing
whine of its gravitors, and I would go out onto the flat roof
to watch the squads of white, heavy-duty robots which
proceed in all innocence with their tasks, not hesitating to
destroy themselves or to destroy the unforeseen obstacle,
in strict obedience to the orders etched into the crystals
of their memory. Then the ship would rise noiselessly,
faster than sound, leaving a sonic boom far behind over
the ocean, and every passenger’s face would light up at the
thought of going home.

What did that word mean to me? Earth? I thought of the
great bustling cities where I would wander and lose my-
self, and I thought of them as I had thought of the ocean
on the second or third night, when I had wanted to throw
myself upon the dark waves. I shall immerse myself
among men. I shall be silent and attentive, an appreciative
companion. There will be many acquaintances, friends,
women— and perhaps even a wife. For a while, I shall have
to make a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand and per-
form the thousands of little gestures which constitute life
on Earth, and then those gestures will become reflexes
again. I shall find new interests and occupations; and I
shall not give myself completely to them, as I shall never
again give myself completely to anything or anybody. Per-
haps at night I shall stare up at the dark nebula that cuts
off the light of the twin suns, and remember everything,
even what I am thinking now. With a condescending,
slightly rueful smile I shall remember my follies and my
hopes. And this future Kelvin will be no less worthy a man
than the Kelvin of the past, who was prepared for anything
in the name of an ambitious enterprise called Contact.
Nor will any man have the right to judge me.

Snow came into the cabin, glanced around, then looked
at me again. I went over to the table:

“You wanted me?”

“Haven’t you got anything to do? I could give you some
work . . . calculations. Not a particularly urgent job ...”

196

“Thanks,” I smiled, “you needn’t have bothered.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I was thinking a few things over, and ...”

“I wish you’d think a little less.”

“But you don’t know what I was thinking about! Tell me
something. Do you believe in God?”

Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction:

“What? Who still believes nowadays ...”

“It isn’t that simple. I don’t mean the traditional God
of Earth religion. I’m no expert in the history of religions,
and perhaps this is nothing new — do you happen to know
if there was ever a belief in an . . . imperfect god?”

“What do you mean by imperfect?” Snow frowned. “In
a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect,
considering that their attributes were amplified human
ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance,
required humble submission and sacrifices, and was jeal-
ous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and
family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mor-
tals ...”

“No,” I interrupted. “I’m not thinking of a god whose
imperfection arises out of the candor of his human crea-
tors, but one whose imperfection represents his essential
characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and
power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences
of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is
a . . . sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and
who does not realize it at first. A god who has created
clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created
systems or mechanisms that served specific ends but have
now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created
eternity, which was to have measured his power, and
which measures his unending defeat.”

Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any
of the wary reserve of recent weeks:

“There was Manicheanism . . .”

“Nothing at all to do with the principle of Good and
Evil,” I broke in immediately. “This god has no existence
outside of matter. He would like to free himself from
matter, but he cannot ...”

Snow pondered for a while:

197

“I don’t know of any religion that answers your descrip-
tion. That kind of religion has never been . . . necessary.
If I understand you, and I’m afraid I do, what you have in
mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of
time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remain-
ing aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine
condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding
that, he despairs. But isn’t this despairing god of yours
mankind, Kelvin? It is man you are talking about, and that
is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically
speaking.”

I kept on:

“No, it’s nothing to do with man. Man may correspond
to my provisional definition from some points of view, but
that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does
not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the
age, impose them on him. Man can serve his age or rebel
against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion
comes to him from outside. If there was only a single
human being in existence, he would apparently be able to
attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in com-
plete freedom — apparently, because a man not brought
up among other human beings cannot become a man.
And the being — the being I have in mind — cannot exist in
the plural, you see?”

“Oh, then in that case ...” He pointed out of the
window.

“No, not the ocean either. Somewhere in its develop-
ment it has probably come close to the divine state, but
it turned back into itself too soon. It is more like an an-
chorite, a hermit of the cosmos, not a god. It repeats
itself, Snow, and the being I’m thinking of would never do
that. Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in
some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some
childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one
star and lighting another. We will notice him after a
while ...”

“We already have,” Snow said sarcastically. “Novas and
supernovas. According to you they are the candles on his
altar.”

198

“If you’re going to take what I say literally ...”

“And perhaps Solaris is the cradle of your divine
child,” Snow went on, with a widening grin that increased
the number of lines round his eyes. “Solaris could be the
first phase of the despairing God. Perhaps its intelligence
will grow enormously. All the contents of our Solar-
ist libraries could be just a record of his teething trou-
bles ...”

“. . . and we will have been the baby’s toys for a while.
It is possible. And do you know what you have just done?
You’ve produced a completely new hypothesis about
Solaris — congratulations! Everything suddenly falls into
place: the failure to achieve contact, the absence of re-
sponses, various . . . let’s say various peculiarities in its
behavior towards ourselves. Everything is explicable in
terms of the behaviour of a small child.”

“I renounce paternity of the theory,” Snow grunted,
standing at the window

For a long instant, we stood staring out at the dark
waves. A long pale patch was coming into view to the east,
in the mist obscuring the horizon.

Without taking his eyes off the shimmering waste. Snow
asked abruptly:

“What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?”

“I don’t know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the
only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose pas-
sion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfils no
purpose — a god who simply is.”

“A mimoid,” Snow breathed.

“What’s that? Oh yes, I’d noticed it. A very old mi-
moid.”

We both looked towards the misty horizon.

“I’m going outside,” I said abruptly. “I’ve never yet
been off the Station, and this is a good opportunity. I’ll be
back in half an hour.”

Snow raised his eyebrows:

“What? You’re going out? Where are you going?”

I pointed towards the flesh-colored patch half-hidden
by the mist:

“Over there. What is there to stop me? I’ll take a small

199

helicopter. When I get back to Earth I don’t want to have
to confess that I’m a Solarist who has never set foot on
Solaris!”

I opened a locker and started rummaging through the
atmosphere-suits, while Snow looked on silently. Finally
he said:

“I don’t like it.”

I had selected a suit. Now I turned towards him:

“What?” I had not felt so excited for a long time. “What
are you worrying about? Out with it! You’re afraid that I
... I promise you I have no intention ... it never entered
my mind, honestly.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather go alone.” I pulled on the suit.
“Do you realize this will be my first flight over the ocean?”

Snow muttered something, but I could not make out
what. I was in a hurry to get the rest of the gear together.

He accompanied me to the hangar deck, and helped me
drag the flitter out onto the elevator disc. As I was check-
ing my suit, he asked me abruptly:

“Can I rely on your word?”

“Still fretting? Yes, you can. Where are the oxygen
tanks?” 76

We exchanged no further words. I slid the transparent
canopy shut, gave him the signal, and he set the lift going.
I emerged onto the Station roof; the motor burst into life;
the three blades turned and the machine rose— -strangely
light — into the air. Soon the Station had fallen far behind.

Alone over the ocean, I saw it with a different eye. I was
flying quite low, at about a hundred feet, and for the first
time I felt a sensation often described by the explorers but
which I had never noticed from the height of the Station-
the alternating motion of the gleaming waves was not at
all like the undulation of the sea or the billowing of clouds.
It was like the crawling skin of an animal— the incessant,
slow-motion contractions of muscular flesh secreting a
crimson foam.

When I started to bank towards the drifting mimoid,
the sun shone into my eyes and blood-red flashes struck
the curved canopy. The dark ocean, flickering with som-
bre flames, was tinged with blue.

200

The flitter came around too wide, and I was carried a
long way down wind from the mimoid, a long irregular
silhouette looming out of the ocean. Emerging from the
mist, the mimoid was no longer pink, but a yellowish grey.
I lost sight of it momentarily, and glimpsed the Station,
which seemed to be sitting on the horizon, and whose
outline was reminiscent of an ancient zeppelin. I changed
course, and the sheer mass of the mimoid grew in my line
of vision— a baroque sculpture. I was afraid of crashing
into the bulbous swellings, and pulled the flitter up so
brutally that it lost speed and started to lurch; but my
caution was unnecessary, for the rounded peaks of those
fantastic towers were subsiding.

I flew past the island; and slowly, yard by yard, I de-
scended to the level of the eroded peaks. The mimoid was
not large. It measured about three quarters of a mile from
end to end, and was a few hundred yards wide. In some
places, it was close to splitting apart. This mimoid was
obviously a fragment of a far larger formation. On the
scale of Solaris it was only a tiny splinter, weeks or per-
haps months old.

Among the mottled crags overhanging the ocean, I
found a kind of beach, a sloping, fairly even surface a few
yards square, and steered towards it. The rotors almost
hit a cliff that reared up suddenly in my path, but I landed
safely, cut the motor and slid back the canopy. Standing
on the fuselage I made sure that there was no chance of
the flitter sliding into the ocean. Waves were licking at the
jagged bank about fifteen paces away, but the machine
rested solidly on its legs, and I jumped to the ‘ground.’

The cliff I had almost hit was a huge bony membrane
pierced with holes, and full of knotty swellings. A crack
several yards wide split this wall diagonally and enabled
me to examine the interior of the island, already glimpsed
through the apertures in the membrane. I edged warily
onto the nearest ledge, but my boots showed no tendency
to slide and the suit did not impede my movements, and
I went on climbing until I had reached a height of about
four storeys above the ocean, and could see a broad
stretch of petrified landscape stretching back until it was
lost from sight in the depths of the mimoid.

201

It was like looking at the ruins of an ancient town, a
Moroccan city tens of centuries old, convulsed by an
earthquake or some other disaster. I made out a tangled
web of winding sidestreets choked with debris, and alley-
ways which fell abruptly towards the oily foam that floated
close to the shore. In the middle distance, great battle-
ments stood intact, sustained by ossified buttresses.
There were dark openings in the swollen, sunken walls —
traces of windows or loop-holes. The whole of this float-
ing town canted to one side or another like a foundering
ship, pitched and turned slowly, and the sun cast continu-
ally moving shadows, which crept among the ruined al-
leys. Now and again a polished surface caught and
reflected the light. I took the risk of climbing higher, then
stopped; rivulets of fine sand were beginning to trickle
down the rocks above my head, cascading into ravines
and alleyways and rebounding in swirling clouds of dust.
The mimoid is not made of stone, and to dispel the illu-
sion one only has to pick up a piece of it: it is lighter than
pumice, and composed of small, very porous cells.

Now I was high enough to feel the swaying of the mi-
moid. It was moving forward, propelled by the dark mus-
cles of the ocean towards an unknown destination, but its
inclination varied. It rolled from side to side, and the
languid oscillation was accompanied by the gentle rus-
tling sound of the yellow and grey foam which streamed
off the emerging shore. The mimoid had acquired its
swinging motion long before, probably at its birth, and
even while it grew and broke up it had retained its initial
pattern.

Only now did I realize that I was not in the least con-
cerned with the mimoid, and that I had flown here not to
explore the formation but to acquaint myself with the
ocean.

With the flitter a few paces behind me, I sat on the
rough, fissured beach. A heavy black wave broke over the
edge of the bank and spread out, not black, but a dirty
green. The ebbing wave left viscous streamlets behind,
which flowed back quivering towards the ocean. I went
closer, and when the next wave came I held out my hand.

202

What followed was a faithful reproduction of a phenome-
non which had been analyzed a century before: the wave
hesitated, recoiled, then enveloped my hand without
touching it, so that a thin covering of ‘air’ separated my
glove inside a cavity which had been fluid a moment previ-
ously, and now had a fleshy consistency. I raised my hand
slowly, and the wave, or rather an outcrop of the wave,
rose at the same time, enfolding my hand in a translucent
cyst with greenish reflections. I stood up, so as to raise my
hand still higher, and the gelatinous substance stretched
like a rope, but did not break. The main body of the wave
remained motionless on the shore, surrounding my feet
without touching them, like some strange beast patiently
waiting for the experiment to finish. A flower had grown
out of the ocean, and its calyx was moulded to my fingers.
I stepped back. The stem trembled, stirred uncertainly
and fell back into the wave, which gathered it and receded.

I repeated the game several times, until — as the first
experimenter had observed — a wave arrived which
avoided me indifferently, as if bored with a too familiar
sensation. I knew that to revive the ‘curiosity’ of the ocean
I would have to wait several hours. Disturbed by the phe-
nomenon I had stimulated, I sat down again. Although I
had read numerous accounts of it, none of them had pre-
pared me for the experience as I had lived it, and I felt
somehow changed.

In all their movements, taken together or singly, each
of these branches reaching out of the ocean seemed to
display a kind of cautious but not feral alertness, a curi-
osity avid for quick apprehension of a new, unexpected
form, and regretful at having to retreat, unable to exceed
the limits set by a mysterious law. The contrast was inex-
pressible between that lively curiosity and the shimmer-
ing immensity of the ocean that stretched away out of
sight ... I had never felt its gigantic presence so strongly,
or its powerful changeless silence, or the secret forces
that gave the waves their regular rise and fall. I sat unsee-
ing, and sank into a universe of inertia, glided down an
irresistible slope and identified myself with the dumb,
fluid colossus; it was as if I had forgiven it everything.

203

without the slightest effort of word or thought.

During that last week, I had been behaving so normally
that Snow had stopped keeping a watchful eye on me. On
the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting
it, I was waiting for something. Her return? How could I
have been waiting for that? We all know that we are
material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and
physics, and not even the power of all our feelings com-
bined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them.
The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love,
stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie,
useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to
being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out
of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates
despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are
we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient
torments, which are all the more profound because they
grow comic with repetition? That human existence should
repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself
like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps play-
ing as he feeds coins into the jukebox . . .

That liquid giant had been the death of hundreds of
men. The entire human race had tried in vain to establish
even the most tenuous link with it, and it bore my weight
without noticing me any more than it would notice a speck
of dust. I did not believe that it could respond to the
tragedy of two human beings. Yet its activities did have a
purpose . . . True, I was not absolutely certain, but leaving
would mean giving up a chance, perhaps an infinitesimal
one, perhaps only imaginary . . . Must I go on living here
then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air
she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her
return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expecta-
tion. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did
not know what achievements, what mockery, even what
tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted
in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.

204

Books by Stamslaw Lem Available in
Harvest paperback editions from Harcourt, Inc.

The Chain of Chance

The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age
Eden
Fiasco

The Futurological Congress
His Master’s Voice
Hospital of Transfiguration
Imaginary Magnitude
The Investigation
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Memoirs of a Space Traveler:
Further Remembrances of Ijon Tichy
Microworlds: Writings on
Science Fiction and Fantasy
More Tales of Pirx the Pilot
Mortal Engines
One Human Minute
A Perfect Vacuum
Return from the Stars
Solaris

The Star Diaries
Tales of Pirx the Pilot

SCIENCE FICTION

A fantastic book/'— steven Soderbergh

W HEN PSYCHOLOGIST Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the
ocean that covers its surface, he finds himself confronting a painful memory embod-
ied in the physical likeness of a past lover. Kelvin learns that he is not alone in this, and that
other crews examining the planet are plagued with their own repressed and newly real memo-
ries. Could it be, as Solaris scientists speculate, that the ocean may be a massive neural center
creating these memories, for a reason no one can identify?

Long considered a classic, Solaris asks the question: Can we understand the universe
around us without first understanding what lies within?

[Lem] is one of the most intelligent, erudite, and comic writers working today."

— ANTHONY BURGESS

"Few are [Lem's] peers in poetic expression, in word play, and in imaginative and
sophisticated sympathy." - K U R T V 0 N N E G U T

STANISLAW LEM is the most widely translated and best known science fiction author writ-
ing outside of the English language. Winner of the Kafka Prize, he is a contributor to many
magazines, including the New Yorker, and he is the author of numerous works. Solaris was first
published in English in 1970.

Cover design by Liz Demeter

A HARVEST BOOK
HARCOURT, INC.

525 B Street, San Diego, CA 92101
15 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010
www.HarcourtBooks.com

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